i actually have no clue if this is controversial, but i would say that the ignition trilogy was were bionicle peaked, namely 07 and 08
despite this, i do feel like g2 should have leaned more into the mystic fantasy of the early years
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I’m with you on this, but I also agree with the general statement about how the fanbase changed over time.
I never really got into the story until after the G1 sets got cancelled, and I’ve always liked all the interwoven plotlines of the later years; since I experienced the story in a fairly nonchronological order at first, I never really experienced the mystery of the early years because I already knew all of the answers, and I feel like a lot of newer fans have that same perspective.
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I don’t mind printed details on Bionicle sets or any buildable Lego figure. I’ve seen a lot of fans who don’t like them on the later CCBS figures, but I don’t see any good reason why they couldn’t be on Constraction sets. If anything, the visors of the Slizers/Throwbots & the “heads” of the Roboriders are good examples of how stylistic they can be.
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I’m not very fond of the G2 head connections. IMO, they’re even more flimsy and insecure than the 2001 masks with the pegs.
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Speed Champions is a better theme than Racers. The builds of the sets are way more intricate and meticulous than the often try-hard, flimsy designs of the Racers’ line cars.
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The next story-driven, big-bang theme should be a space-centric line that is more about exploration and adventure instead of the repetitive heroes vs villains in a war premise.
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I agree with this. I wish the G2 masks had connectors that used either axles or studs, because they’re really hard to use without a head.
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I second the motion
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To be fair, they’re trying to do different things.
(Side note: Tiny Turbos was awesome, though)
Yeah, there hasn’t been a Space theme in over a decade; the last proper theme (i.e. not counting space-themed City sets) was Galaxy Squad, which was discontinued after 2013.
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I buy off-brand bricks.
Fact is, Megabloks makes Halo sets and LEGO doesn’t.
… Or “Mega Construx,” whatever they’re called now.
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Have they fixed their abysmal quality control?
For years mega bloks sets were so incompetent the pieces could barely stay together; I had a castle from their dragon theme several years ago (read: more than a decade) and it was so bad my entire family collectively threw in the towel and gave up trying to build it.
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Dragons was first released over two decades ago, they’ve definitely improved since then
I own a couple of the Halo sets and the quality is actually very good
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I would say that Mega Blocks has questionable quality in my experience. Sometimes it’s very good, and sometimes it’s either very loose or so tight that you physically cannot separate parts. Also the colors are just off for me. The parts I have all have a weird metallic sheen that looks add, and makes stress marks show up very easily. The Halo figures are pretty cool, though (and I’ve made some Galidor-style abominations from them).
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I remember someone got me a Knights’ Kingdom-esque figure, and even even as a kid I noticed the plastic quality was off.
However, most of their quality has improved considerably, at least in my limited experience.
But yeah, off-brand LEGO is a mixed bag in general. It’s rarely LEGO-standard, but some are pretty decent. But I remember helping my Aunt with a Walking Dead set a few years back, and boy that thing could barely hold itself together.
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Not gonna lie I agree with all of these. Printed details are totally fine (provided we eventually got the unprinted piece) because they add so much to our “builder’s arsenal” and add depth/detail while still being manageable shapes.
That G2 mask function was a neat idea and I certainly see what they wanted to do, but I’d agree the connection was not great. My first Bionicle set, Kopaka (G2), I remember had some… issues with his mask that caused me to eventually take him apart to harvest for parts. I wish they had either added some sort of stud-mouth or axle-mouth connection to the G2 heads so we could have found some use for them…
Speed Champions vs. Racers isn’t something I can really comment in-detail on as I didn’t get many Racers sets and I don’t have any Speed Champions sets, but I can see where you’re coming from - Racers suffers from “old” Lego overcomplication that’s good for very young children and nostalgia and not much else.
I’m definitely down for another space theme and I think it would be amazing to get something that wasn’t just another good vs. evil story (leave that for Bionicle!). I think there would have to be some sort of conflict if they wanted a story like you said, so maybe there’d have to be a bad guy every once in a while, but I think your idea would work!
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You could always have there be a more “industrialized” group competing with a more friendly group for exploring the galaxy (sort of like a space version of World Racers). The industrial group wants to set up factories to harvest supplies from newly discovered worlds, while the others want to study alien societies and planets as they are, using a more diplomatic approach than the “bad guys”.
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As a fan of both themes. I think that for the time they were made in, Racers sets were pretty good. It’s kinda hard to compare the two themes due to when they were released though. The last (major) Racers sets were released in 2012, over a decade ago, and since then Lego, in general, has become a lot more intricate and meticulous in its builds (There’s also just a larger variety of pieces at their disposal then there was in 2012). Let’s use Ninjago as an example, as it’s a theme that has been continuously running for that entire decade of time. Compare the Destiny’s Bounty released that year (9446) to the one released this year (71797). The one released this year is a whole lot more complex than that one even though they look to be about the same size. Same with the dragons. The ones released this year look a whole lot more detailed than the one that was released in 2012.
Also, as TheJerminator said, the focus of the two themes is/was somewhat different. While Speed Champions is focused on replicating real-life cars, Racers was mainly just about making cars out of Lego. Also, yes, Tiny Turbos were in fact awesome and I feel like that’s what the Speed Champions polybags are kind of trying to be
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I feel like it’s impossible to compare the two themes. Speed Champions focuses on creating realistic, accurate, minifigure-scale representations of real life cars, while Racers was all about wacky designs throughout a large variety of sizes and mediums.
The first year of Racers was nothing but the Xalax sets, after which it focused on Drome Racers, which featured multiple different classes of its own. There were tiny cars driven by Xalax-Minifig hybrids with pull-back motors, multiple track sets for those cars, the larger vehicles driven by actual minifigures, vehicles of a similar size but without minifigures and a massive variety of Technic vehicles including various RC ones.
Once Drome Racers was over, Racers was again split. First of all, you’ve got Tiny Turbos (all of which are amazing). Then there’s Power Racers - typically larger brick built vehicles like the ones in Drome Racers, though occasionally they were Technic-based - they often featured some kind of shared yearly action feature, whether that was a pull-back motor, slammer, pump launcher, crashing mechanism or something else entirely. And then there’s the Technic vehicles again, this time more grounded than the Drome Racers ones and typically far larger and parts-intensive. There was only ever one of these per year due to their massive size.
Comparing Racers and Speed Champions is like comparing Ninjago and Ninja 1998 - they both have a similar basic concept, ninjas in this case, but they’re designed with entirely different purposes in mind.
Speed Champions vehicles are more detailed and intricate because they’re replicating real, existing vehicles at a consistent defined scale, with no functions to speak of and seemingly intended primarily for display.
Racers sets, on the other hand, are undoubtedly fun toys first and foremost, designed to be played with. They weren’t trying to resemble any existing vehicle, so they didn’t need heaps of detailing. They just needed to look cool, be affordable, and have plenty of play value.
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I’m going to be honest here, and I think this is one of my biggest issues with modern lego in general, IMO. So much of it is trying to go for extreme detail and all these massive part counts, that i think they sometimes forget it’s supposed to be a toy.
Most lego sets are more like technic sets of yesteryear and today, than older lego sets, besides theming anyway. Kinda why I’ve fallen off and only pic the occasional set.
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I don’t mind this on sets like Speed Champions, where I’m sure LEGO pays massive licensing fees for the use of actual cars (and drivers in some instances) in the sets, but it is annoying elsewhere. There are far too many sets where a function or various small parts used on details seem to unnecessarily affect the part count and price, when they could easily implement a simpler solution and still retain play value.
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Another thing I notice when looking at older sets is that a lot of those themes had built-in inter-set playability, with some kind of common “function” that allowed sets to interact with each other more directly than just being played with next to each other.
For example, many of the sets from the first iteration of Blacktron had detachable cockpits and modular spacecraft that could be combined with each other, and the first two iterations of Space Police had repeated “prison cell” builds that could be transported by most Space Police vehicles of their respective iterations.
Even some slightly more modern themes that Bionicle-fan-age people would be more familiar had weaker versions of this, such as all the Power Miners sets being able to pass crystals amongst themselves.
The current big themes, such as Ninjago, don’t really have that. Sure, the sets have a ton of individual play features (generally even more than many older sets), and kids can play with the different sets together, but they generally lack that built-in common functionality.
(I’ll admit that I’m not super well-versed in modern System themes, though, so if there is actually a theme with common cross-set play functions, I’d love to hear about it)
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As far as I can tell, the final time they ever did that was with Mars Mission. Almost every single human vehicle has at least one transparent orange containment tube on it, which can hold pods carrying crystals or captive aliens. The main base set has a detachable tube which can hook up to any of the pods in any of the sets and extract the cargo.
The third does too! Every SPIII pod is built exactly the same way and they’re all detachable and swappable
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Lego Atlantis had the ring items that could be used to trigger functions on various sets in the line. Not many more I can think of off the top of my head right now.
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