What are the community's general opinions on the future of Bionicle? (poll)

… You … could look at it that way, yeah. But AFOLs who want Pirates aren’t “above average” LEGO fans, while BIONICLE fans … simply are. A minority with an incredibly niche hobby, an obsession with a toy line that ended ten years ago.

Don’t villainize AFOLs. If BIONICLE came back and wasn’t successful, it wouldn’t be because of “them negative AFOLs!” It’ll be because, like you said, it won’t appeal to average fans. You overestimate the number of BIONICLE fans still around.

apparently villainize isn’t a word … Ok…

ok fine what about any of the mahri sets. Those have enough system to be counted as fully system sets with constraction highlights.

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uh

Those are system bionicle sets I guess.

I’ve got four hopes for how bionicle could come back.

  1. Come back as a contraction theme with the G1 story. Essentially, basically the way it was. This will never happen.

  2. Come back as a system theme with the G1 story

  3. Come back as a contraction theme with the visual elements of G1, but otherwise have an unrelated story

  4. Come back in movie or book or tv form.

None of these are ever gonna happen. Bionicle could very realistically get a system reboot with a story unrelated to G1’s, but at that point it’s too different from all of the aspects of Bionicle I like for me to care. What would be left in that case? They try and bring back Bionicle’s “edge” or “tone” or “depth” or “2000s rock songs”? All that stuffs kinda nebulous, ngl. I’d rather they just make a new theme in that instance and not tie into bionicle at all.

At this point in my life, Im entirely content with Bionicle staying dead in any official capacity.

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Bruh, that pretty much describes most of the other LEGO sub-communites, except those fans want the return of themes that ended like 20 years ago. Say what you will about those lines being more “in the spirit of LEGO” but the fact of the matter is, they are niche hobbies as well. Heck, I’d argue despite LEGO looking back at those lines more fondly, their impact were still marginally lower than what Bionicle achived.

I have nothing against anyone in the LEGO communtiy, but if they keep looking at our favorite theme as some sort of LEGO heresy, then they are pretry much asking to be villainized.
Look no further than the 90th anniversary poll, and you’ll see what I mean.
And speaking of which, I don’t think the number of Bionicle fans is lower than that of the rest of the LEGO sub-communties (if anything, it is higher). Again, the 90th anniverssary poll gave us a pretty good insight into that.

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I don’t feel that it’s justification for it.

LEGO existed as a building block system long before Bionicle and long after as well. It’s the status quo; anything outside of that is practically a different product to the average fan. And if you’re one of those people for whom LEGO = LEGO, how are you going to feel when those Bionicle kids keep trying to share the same space with you?

For a better illustration, how do you feel about Neo Shifters?

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I think that to bring back Bionicle Lego should do either:

  1. Continue at the end of 2010’s story.
    or
  2. Create an entirely new story with the name Bionicle with Toa, Matoran, and similar species to G1.
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i like

I don’t there’s justification for any anger or extreme dislike towards Bionicle from Lego fans when they coexisted for a long time. If Lego had replaced all system products with constraction, than that would be a different story. Sharing space with Bionicle fans currently costs Lego fans next to nothing.

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I would like to hear a specific citation of where they coexisted at any point in time. Sure, individuals have coexisted, but from almost the very beginning the AFOL community has been almost disgusted by the presence of the Bionicle community. Sharing space with Bionicle fans now costs the greater LEGO community peace of mind, knowing their perfect system is being compared to and even built with this bizarre frankenstein socket-and-ball system with technic elements. It’s not LEGO in a physical sense and so it hardly belongs in a world of squares and circles.

I refer you to my neo shifters question.

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To clarify, I mean to say that system products and Bionicle products coexisted without effecting eachother’s quality. Because of that I don’t think there’s a valid justification for either “side” to be mad at a product just because it’s different

As for neo shifters, meh. I thought they looked neat, but they were annoying to build like many megabloks sets at the time. Unless Megabloks was abandoning their systems sets for neo shifters behind the scenes, I see no valid reason for anger.

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Neo Shifters is pretty cool. I have one figure and it’s quite a neat design, with Bohrok-style ball folding, light-up eyes and a projectile launcher, as well as some crisp printing. It’s honestly not as bad as you’d think.

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Maybe AFOL’s should drop the “A” in their title if they can’t tolerate a product’s existence, not because it hurts system, but because they can’t bear for system to be compared to Bionicle.

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Since I put down “Other (Please elaborate)” in the first poll:
I have similar thoughts as @ToaOfPlastic, though I haven’t read Nova Orbis yet and I don’t think a distant time skip is needed (a different set of characters in a slightly different location, for example, is one of multiple opportunities). A continuation of the story serials would be mildly interesting, but I think there are better plotlines that can be created or revisited.

A Soft Continuation was a close second choice, but even just at Journey’s End, a lot of important characters were involved in conflicts that hadn’t yet been fully resolved, so you’d have to first resolve those in a satisfying way and then work on setting up the next big conflict/mystery for the new story, which feels like a difficult way to start things up again.

And since I also chose the least-popular option in the second poll: I probably should have voted for “As long as possible”, but for me, that has the connotation of overstaying its welcome, so I chose the next-longest option. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Alright… What if someone integrated Neo Shifters into their Bionicle moc(in spite of how that’s really impossible)? Would you be upset?

And would you be upset if they claim the two systems are the same?

It’s not so much the tolerance that is an issue.

Do you realize how loud Bionicle fans are? It’s one theme - one spinoff system in LEGO’s library - and yet they will never shut up about how great it was, how cool the system is, about how much they want it back. I said peace of mind because without Bionicle infiltrating their attention, the AFOLs only have the normal system of LEGO to worry about; a system which in their circles is primarily other adults doing extremely similar things. Bionicle, for most AFOLs, is only for kids, and doesn’t attract more than a handful of professional adult builders.

Can it be used by adults? Sure. But the audience is mostly fangirling kids who want equal recognition in the eyes of the AFOLs, and that’s why I said peace of mind.

I know I’m not who you directed this at, but I think the main reasons it’s difficult to give a “no” answer aren’t entirely relevant to the question of BIONICLE vs. other LEGO bricks.

I’d be… not really “upset”, but in disagreement, primarily because either:

  1. The pieces do not really fit together, or
  2. If I imagined they did, like you instructed, then there’s still the fact that it’s another company working outside of a partnership with LEGO to make something that happens to be compatible. Would you be upset if someone claimed that normal LEGO bricks and normal Mega Bloks bricks are the same system? Or LEGO and clone brands? LEGO and customizers’ items? etc. It starts to address something different than LEGO vs. BIONICLE.

I get that no comparison’s perfect, and I don’t know if I have a better one to offer in exchange (maybe CCBS vs. old BIONICLE pieces?), but I think your other points are fairly strong, so perhaps a replacement comparison isn’t even required.

If it’s executed well, I’m all for it

I would likely disagree on a technical level, but if they pull an effective fusion of the two systems, that’s awesome.

In these types of cases I think everyone involved is a moron. The only thing that matters is if you can express creativity with the system. You can with system and you can with Bionicle. There’s no valid reason for either side to be at each other’s throats.

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I was gonna go on a very long winded tangent but for the sake of reading I’ll go on a tangent again, but briefer.

First, no, I don’t need a reboot. It has been 6 years since G2 and 11 since G1, I have moved on. Fans have been making their own stories, sets, custom parts, etc. for a very long time since then. On top of that, even if LEGO were to reboot Bionicle, I’m pretty sure Bionicle fans would be disappointed because LEGO’s storytelling/marketing methods are much different than it was in 2000 (G2 is a prime example). I guess it could be like Ninjago, but I strongly suspect that any reboot would have, like, a nickel and two quarters for their budget. What I’m basically saying is that I see no good reason to reboot Bionicle other than “for funsies.” Legit for me personally those little Bionicle easter eggs in System sets are more than enough.

Secondly (and tangentially, I might add), don’t antognize AFOLs if they don’t want a reboot. I get the (strong) feeling that AFOLs don’t like Bionicle. The first reason being because Bionicle’s scrambled mechanics and System’s geometric aesthetics mix like oil and water, but also because fans keep insisting that Bionicle come back. I like both constraction and System, but hypothetically if I was an AFOL and never liked Bionicle, I’d imagine getting annoyed if people kept asking for some toyline from LEGO’s experimentation phase to get rebooted. And I’d imagine getting more annoyed if I expressed an apathy for Bionicle and people started getting all up in arms about it. I appreciate that some people really want it back and I respect their enthusiasm, but I heavily advise that some of the rowdier few don’t get mad at AFOLs for not sharing that same sentiment.

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I can agree with that.
As cool as minifig based bionicle could be, (especially if it turns out anything like Sokoda’s brickonicle mocs) I feel that even if constraction isn’t necessarily the “core” of Bionicle, it’s still a very important element of Bionicle’s identity.

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Something not so different. You have your gorgeous clutch power system which has been going strong and here comes this bizarro system, which was fine and tolerable in the early years as Slizers and then Bionicle, but now it’s becoming the most successful LEGO theme. As time goes on it gets worse and worse, with Bionicle fans becoming in some cases more vocal than normal fans. There was detest at the system before, but at this point it’s turned into outright opposition. At least Galidor had the decency to die and Knight’s Kingdom had the decency to stay small.

Then you’d make for a poor AFOL, the majority of which are purist to the point where even if they use permanently affixing glue to secure their models, they will not touch a copycat piece with a 39 1/2’ pole.

It’s a similar stigma with Bionicle. All the pieces are strange, alien, and quite useless for traditional LEGO buildings, only appearing in them rarely and almost always with attention drawn to how there’s a Bionicle piece there. Bionicle is not LEGO in a physical sense; it’s only LEGO to AFOLs because LEGO made it, much like the LEGO attire or the LEGO Movie 2 night lamp. And nobody is making anything out of the LEGO Movie 2 night lamp.

(Although they should.)

So it’s a little unfair for you to blast AFOLs for being uptight or antagonistic when you’re demanding the misfit theme of the LEGO fanbase gets all the attention and another reboot and a dedicated anniversary set and official recognition from LEGO and a place among the established AFOLs who don’t like it to begin with.

I mean, for the white-collar adults who sink their finances into this absurd hobby, it gets a little tiring when all the Bionicle fans ever say is “MORE MORE MORE”.

You’ve made the mistake of attributing yourself to the crowd of manic fangirling kids and then arguing that since you’re the exception the AFOLs should lay down their arms. But unfortunately, you’re about 15 years too late for the ‘creativity is all that matters’ approach.

I spent way too long replying to this. :stuck_out_tongue: I think I understand the point you are making in this paragraph in isolation, but I do not fully understand it as a reply to what I said, since it does not address the clone brand issues at all. Unless it’s saying, “The average AFOL views BIONICLE as being as bad as a clone brand, and BIONICLE’s adoration being as bad as a similar level of adoration directed to a clone brand. So perhaps the idea of mixing a clone brand with BIONICLE can help you imagine how they feel, regardless of whether or not you agree with their arguments”? Idk, maybe I’m being dumb and missing the obvious.

Regardless of whether or not I understand it as a counter-argument to what I was saying, though, I think it’s effective at conveying the motivation for being upset with BIONICLE rather than merely not liking it.