I’ve had this happen as well. I wonder if that colour of plastic is more prone to breaking, like 07 lime and dark red?
same
same
same
Dang, sounds like you’ve had some depressing breakages…
Well, it could be time, weak materials or being in a box full of pieces for a long time…and moving around a lot
As far as I can tell this is a genuine issue, it’s happened to me more times than I can count. You’ll wanna replace them with modern equivalents, all the blue pins from that period are prone to shattering. You may notice they have a slight yellowish tint to them, while more modern ones are pure blue
that’s painful… next time two beams with rubber bits on the front might be good, or a cage-style bumper that wraps around the entirety of the front wheel assembly.
Also, Power Functions. I knew you were cultured like that, Bioman… “Powered UP” can never hold a candle to Power Functions.
internal screaming
Old pneumatic hoses becoming porous and crumbling is sad, but no surprise… The cylinder breaking off like that is a first for me.
Man that sucks. at least you got to use it in a build first
Now THAT is tragic. I know those old cylinders are pricey, at least in the US.
Was this part of a set or was it a MOC?
finally, no australia
Part of a universal set, 8044 to be exact (from yesterday’s flea market). I had just built the second model and was disassembling it again to build the next one, and then… Wasn’t yanking the tube to the side or anything, just tried to pull it straight off. Guess the plastic has seen better days (it’s a 1989 set after all).
I’ll look into getting a replacement. I have a bunch of spare cylinders, but only the old single-acting variants, while this set uses a double-acting one.
If you wanted to, you could drill out the rest of the snapped off stub and fabricate a replacement nozzle. But yeah, man that sucks. Most of my pneumatic stuff is broken too, often the actual arms.
While they don’t impact the stability, I just noticed these two cracks on my Matoro Mahri. That set was sealed until I opened and built it half a year ago, haven’t disassembled him since. Is this an unlucky coinicdence or are untouched pieces somehow more prone to breaking?
Sometimes the rigidity of the pieces is too great, even for their own good. Chances are they snapped when you first put them together and then slowly just started cracking more as the set started to “settle.”
RIP Mata foot ![]()
YIKES.
I’ve had the same stuff others have mentioned - newer bohrok feet and kal feet, piraka upper limbs, an insane assortment of the Phantoka+ sockets, the mahri lime green plastic syndrome… Zadakh torso axel slot on one side, no clue how that happened, same with a Hordika Onewa torso axel slot… a Turahk staff end axel snapped off when it fell down the stairs…
My Boggarak head piece can’t snap its jaws anymore because of a screw-up with a blade, but that one’s on me…
When we moved, SOMEONE just carelessly threw all my bionicles in a bucket instead of letting me put them in like i SPECIFICALLY INSISTED UPON, while i wasn’t home. Surprise surprise, several parts broke that shouldn’t have broke. Breakout Evo’s helmet axel snapped off in the head it was mounted on.
In the non-Bionicle world, one of minifig Jar-Jar Binks hands split in half for no apparent reason… so did a few black hands…
…can’t think of any others off-hand.
Now, this hails from a humorous reaction image of whose origin I am unaware, but I have never seen such a terrible fate befall a minifigure before.
Cracked when I tried to put it in a socket… I just stared at this and the perfectly unscathed socket for a full minute and thought “I thought this was supposed to go the other way around.”
Okay, rant time about something I wish was more recognised within the community
Personally I wouldn’t call this unexpected — it’s absolutely less well-known than it should be, but Gadunka’s bright blue parts are just as bad if not worse than the lime green pieces from the same year. They are extremely brittle and will break just from being connected to other pieces; the double sockets snap and the Hordika necks have their ball joint shear off, as seen here.
All of his bright blue pieces, including the three 1x7 Technic beams making up his torso, also have a tendency to yellow at a much faster rate than they likely should — even if not exposed to sunlight. The severity of this can range from extreme to very minor, but despite having gone through five Gadunkas, I am yet to find one without some degree of photodegradation on his bright blue parts. Combined with the fragility of the pieces, I’m pretty certain there must’ve been some kind of formulation error like with lime green.
The 1x7 beams can be replaced easily, as can the double sockets with unaffected copies from Suukorak. Unfortunately, the Hordika necks were not so lucky, remaining exclusive to Gadunka. If you have the guy built I would recommend never disassembling any of his bright blue ball/socket connections for his own safety.








