I actually quite like the Vahki, I just think they were victims of “sets first, story later” actually more accurately “movie first, sets second, story last”. As far as we can tell, the Vahki were created for LoMn as the fairly uninteresting police robots we see. Then they got fleshed out into sets, which i guess were good enough for Lego to make them the first villain wave for that year. After that, well, lego has six different color production lines, so that’s why we got that many when in the movie there are only two variants.
Of course, at that point it’s up to the story guys to try and justify why a kid should buy all of them, and what better way then to give them each super unique and powerful powers? Now of course, creating another six of those and having them make even remote sense in story is… easier said then done. Remember, these were background characters made for a movie, with the purpose of corralling little powerless dudes when they didn’t want to work.
Ok, now I guess I’ll get to my actual thoughts on the Vahki. As sets, they are very good. They have a very unique and cool design, great weapons, and VERY good functionality, alongside very good articulation. As for characters … well, I actually quite like them too. As many people have said, the promotions really did a great job as making them a threat.
Oooh, good find! It seems entirely likely that’s what happened. Likewise makes sense why it would’ve been scrubbed from the wiki (ie, someone making that extrapolation/just simply misreading it, and then putting it up there). Thank you for pointing this out!
As I’ve stated further up the topic I think set wise they’re fine enough, the head is neat. But story wise it’s just wasted potential-the animations and encyclopaedia gave a hint of how menacing they could be but the movie and other media didn’t show that. Another case of too many things going on to cram in.
Never really liked the Vakhi. Always bland to me. Just not as cool as the bohrok to me. Same wit the visorak. 04 and 05 villain army builders didn’t have the same feel as the bohrok and rahkshi.
I personally don’t hate the Vahki, but I do believe they were boring characters in the comics, books, and movie before the 2005 story made them interesting in which the Great Cataclysm messed them up and allow them to not just speak normal Matoran, but think for themselves (murderously), and fire destructive energy blast.
I know Greg hated them for being clone sets but he actually made them cool in Web of the Visorak and Challenge of the Hordika and a legit threat.
Fun fact: in Icelandic, “Vaki” means “hormone.” This means very little until you consider how the GSR was conceived–the Vahki are Mata Nui’s hormones, keeping his bodily functions in order and telling his constituents what to do. It’s another subtle form of foreshadowing.
oh my gosh, you sir, deserve some kind of recognition for this, it’s mind blowing, and it makes even more sense when you take the Vahki’s staff powers into consideration. Wait, I just used google to confirm this and “hormone” translates to “hormón” in Icelandic for me and several sources show the same, is there alternative translations or something? I’m no longer sure if you are correct. Even if their name doesn’t translate directly in a different language, the Vahki still kind of function in a similar way to hormones with their stun staffs and all as I mentioned before, so there’s still that at least.
I think the Vahki were hampered by Bionicle being a kids story, they are one of the franchise’s darkest elements with the idea of a corrupt police state being their central core. But since Lego probably wanted to remain mostly apolitical, we really only saw brief snippets of the Vahki’s true horror and the rest of the time saw them as mindless mooks for the Toa to smash.
It is a shame, I think if Lego let Bionicle have a darker tone back in 2004 we could have had a much stronger Vahki story that showcased their dark side better.
