I looked it up a little, it seems like almost everything surrounding Hoseryx is a great example of how disgusting the bionicle fan base can be.
The boards may be dying but at least there’s not really any more of that left.
4 Likes
Honestly, I somewhat feel that those involved in that debacle were less doing anything because of having a thought about canonicity etc., than just doing big-time trolling (during the contest) and it only escalated afterwards due to it being a bunch of people just like the Hoseryx promoters on both sides. (It’s things like that that make me very hesitant to believe anything good of fans having a hand in official narratives for any IP, because you get one troll getting their hands in the lore nerds’ pie and things are guaranteed to get nuclear fast.)
I think the Fanon contests, while a good idea in theory, were just not executed well in that there was a bunch of drama caused by outright vote cheaters, as well as a significant number of contributors trying their hardest to bend or break the initial rules. I remember quite a lot of controversy for the entries for Karzahni’s brother, as a lot of top entries were heavily criticized for being highly complicated to build (and expensive to source the parts for). There was also significant drama regarding art-only entries (which imo would have been less of a problem if there hadn’t been a bit of a conflict between the winners existing just to give a representation of characters vs. them being buildable).
Don’t get me wrong, I like how active the community used to be with events like these, but I’m glad I wasn’t around to see how a lot of prominent people got permanently banned from here.
5 Likes
Why?
Not only would it be really hard to prove who did it, but the Hoseryx moc isn’t valuable enough to legally fight over. Just for the cost of retaining an attorney you could build a whole army of them.
On the Boards, anyhow.
I’ve taken some hesitant glances at other Bionicle community gatherings and they are not as pleasant as the Boards. I think it helps the Boards a lot to not have the podcast active - not because of the podcast itself, per se, but to have a site run by people who aren’t caught in the Bionicle community spiral. To have grown up and moved on and be able to look back on the toyline and the community with a more mature perspective is one thing, but to do so officially is another.
I was the first person to hold a fanon contest after the canon contests ended, beating out Duckbrick by I think a couple of months. I wonder if I should start another one up again. No stakes, no canonicity, just fun (the winner of that contest was a pickup truck).
6 Likes
I’d be interested to see that. Theoretically, it wouldn’t be that hard to find the street they buried her on.
3 Likes
Now having read in thorough fashion the discussion of this topic, one thing is for certain. We, hopefully, now have shed the venomous fury indulged in the more foolish time of youth to now practice the three virtues as responsible members of Mata Nui/ Metro Nui/ Spherus Magna, etc. United in duty. Bound in destiny. (And I may invite Hero Factory fans to explore the forum without fear of witnessing an execution. 
)
4 Likes
Get 4chan’s brightest minds on it, we’ll have it recovered in no time
kill them all 
mods this is clearly a joke the only people who deserve to die are whoever cratered G2’s ratings on retailer websites this is also a joke nobody deserves to die
5 Likes
@mesonak back me up i need help defending hf from the haters
3 Likes
As someone who was there when BIONICLE G2 failed to launch, I can tell you it was not hatred from fans that prompted the decision to cancel, it was plain and simply poor sales. And since the age range the sets were aimed at were kids who weren’t around for G1, I doubt the reaction of G1 fans came into play. Interestingly, set sales picked up toward the end of the year but it was too late to reverse course at that point.
19 Likes
gosh that makes me sad to hear. I was looking forward to at least a third year of G2 back then. Still wish I coulda seen it.
Also Greg descended from Olympus to answer us mortals quarrelling.
9 Likes
Was that poor sales from the LEGO group’s perspective or those of individual retailers?
If we believe hard enough, we can gaslight ourselves into thinking there was and that it was totally cool and saved the world 
7 Likes
Ghid, it was based on set sales at retail. It’s important to remember that, whatever its virtues or vices, G2 did not have the kind of marketing campaign behind it that G1 did. G1 had the truck tour, the teaser campaign, the online game, and the comic … G2 did not. So you probably had an awareness problem among the target age group (which would have been 7-8, I think). And I don’t think LEGO had the patience at the time to see if sales would bounce back. I think were a little confusion in the approach to it, in terms of target age and other things (for example, bringing me in to look at the story bible, then shutting me out).
15 Likes
i got most of my g2 sets from discount stores. 40% off easy. really disappointed when it failed, young me had to move on to ninjago. to this day i think it could have been the next big thing
greg if you like one of my posts you have my firstborn
9 Likes
I’ve spoken to folks in LEGO who were present for the launch and runtime of G2, which is where I first heard of the fans’ manipulation of the retailers’ product ratings. I later confirmed their statements myself by going through online ratings from the period.
Some folks in the topic have misinterpreted my statements as claiming fans were 100% responsible for the downfall of the product line. It wasn’t the primary reason, by any means, but it apparently did have an impact on how LEGO viewed the line, as you said.
Not consulting you was one of the dumbest choices they made. Your reputation and extensive history with the company should have made you the first choice to handle promotional media like the very scarce books. I hope that, if LEGO ever decides to give Bionicle another try, they give it room to breathe.
10 Likes
This is not at all meant to discredit any of your research, but is such information generally something company employees are allowed to publicly state? I feel like that would be information LEGO would probably not disclose, unless they had an overriding reason to publicly release it (like informing retailers that the product ratings are/were being manipulated maliciously).
9 Likes
I would assume such information sharing is probably harmless so long after the fact but also generally frowned upon. To that end, I will not be naming names.
I was given the impression that this was information gleaned only after the cancellation or too late in the run for it to matter to retailers. Even if it had been obtained immediately upon launch, LEGO corporate might have considered it too much effort to try and convince retailers that they should continue to stock as much product in spite of the ratings, regardless of whether or not the retailers were privy to the manipulation.
5 Likes
This is hilarious to me because I remember a post from some Lego official media stating that “the line sold well”, but I always knew this had to be the case. I don’t know if this is the kind of inside baseball you can share, but my assumption was that in the wake of the Lego Movie, Lego wanted to use their resources to make “real Lego” themes, which Bionicle was not, to support the company after the movie’s success and meet demand.
7 Likes
No, LEGO Movie had nothing to do with anything. I think the company went into G2 a little leery of trying to catch lightning in a bottle twice. So when sales were flat, it was a fairly easy decision to say this isn’t working. By the time sales picked up, the product assortment for the next year had already been set and it wouldn’t have made sense to try to cram G2 into it (at best, you would have had a 1HY ‘03 situation of repurposing existing sets, which almost killed G1). I think there were numerous factors that went into G2 initially not doing well. My own feeling is that G1 was aimed at 8 year olds, but the marketing and the story were aimed at 10-12 year olds. G2 was aimed young in all aspects, and by taking away the aspirational aspect of the theme, I think it lost some of the coolness factor.
Whether or not they are ever going to do a G3, I do not know, since I haven’t been there in four years. I am doing my own somewhat twisted version of G3 on my Patreon 
13 Likes
Incidentally, at the time LEGO Movie was coming out, the company was planning for a “soft landing.” The feeling was the massive set sales couldn’t last forever and they had to be prepared for a drop. Then the movie came out, did really well, set sales went through the roof across the board and any thought of preparing for a fall ended. Three years later, when there was a modest drop in sales, they overreacted and laid a bunch of people off. (It was a blip - sales rocketed back up in 2018.)
12 Likes
I am curious if you have any source backing this up? Isn’t it the case that the first wave had the best sales and then all subsequent waves sold increasingly worse? That’s the case with nearly all LEGO themes. There is a reason the final 2016 Summer wave of G2 had such a limited release and was available only for a very short time.
I was working there at the time. That’s my source.
13 Likes