G1 ended for a myriad of reasons, but what (in your opinion) sealed it’s fate like nothing else did?
For me, it was the 2008-2010 joint system. It’s an obvious choice but it’s so baffling, having a toy meant to be reused, be so breakable.
The joints do succeed in getting more friction… until they break enough to become looser than 1998-2007 joints.
I was gonna say the joints as well. A toy that’s meant to be built, played, diassembled and rebuilt breaking after just 2-3 uses? That’s bad.
Other than that, I often see people say that the storyline got too complicated for new fans to get into, which is probably also the reason for the Glatorian soft reboot.
This last one is just pure speculation but… Bionicle had existed for 9 years at that point, maybe the consumers were starting to get a little tired of it and wanted something fresh. Does anyone have sales data for Hero Factory’s first two waves compared to Bionicle G1’s last two waves? If it sold better than Bionicle, this might possibly be a reason too.
IMO, it was the inaccessibility of the side media (the books and comics), which were the primary source material of most of G1’s story.
Most of the books, as I know, were never released in foreign languages, and they were also limited in availability in bookstores. (The same goes for the comics, which I recall were exclusive to Lego Magazines.)
The multimedia strategy for G1 was a good idea, but unfortunately, it got messy quickly.
I’d say competition from similar sci-fi and fantasy media. Most of the original fans of Bionicle would have grown up since 2001, and while they would have still bought sets, by the time 2007 rolled around Transformers and Marvel were making toys and movies that could easily compete with Bionicle’s story and toys. They might not be the same, but for many, they would have been a bigger draw than cyborgs fighting gas-in-a-mech-suit.
As much as I love Metru Nui I honestly think the decision to switch gears to a prequel arc with an entirely new building style, aesthetic, and setting right at the peak of the theme’s popularity probably alienated a lot of fans.
Maybe it didn’t necessarily kill the theme but I think that’s where the decline in its popularity started.
BIONICLE was an insanely powerful IP, not just for LEGO but for the toy industry as a whole. Rumors that it saved the company, while not very accurate, aren’t unfounded by any means, as it generated a massive chunk of LEGO’s profits for a good while.
But it’s not difficult by any means to look at 2009 and see the train had run out of steam. A sudden and drastic change in setting following up a rather unpopular portrayal of the original six heroes coupled with a flimsy and insufficient change in the socket molds lead to unpopularity starting to spread, and LEGO decided to cut the theme lest its downward trajectory continue any further.
I know of some old fogeys in the community who were around for the early years and lost interest once 2004 rolled around, so there’s probably more fans out there who feel the same way, be it for the prequel nature or the sudden and drastic shift in tone from tribal to futuristic.
I mean, I wouldn’t quite say “rumors”, given there are people who were actually in charge of the company at the time who have said as much.
The phrasing “saved the company” could paint a somewhat inaccurate picture of events though. Bionicle kept LEGO afloat during its worst years but it definitely didn’t singlehandedly solve every problem the company was going through at the time.
the complex and hard to follow story certainly didn’t help with this.
what I noticed as the last few years were released was higher prices for sets that had fewer pieces, lack of innovation and new pieces, and the introduction of vehicles that replaced titan sets were all major turn-offs for me
I think the vehicles were pretty cool but it likely did contribute to the downfall with the lack of many titan sets. but I will say that the few titans we got in that era were pretty good like Icarax, Takanuva, Tuma, and Fero and Skirmix.
If 2004/2005 alienated and turned off fans from the brand…then I’d say 2006 definitely revived interest in Bionicle for a very short period of time and won over a new younger generation of fans.
Well Takanuva was one of the best designed titans they ever released, but Skirmix was really just a miniature Kardas Dragon (itself another amazing set), while those others were pretty well just canister builds with a few extras thrown on. There was the Mata Nui set, but that just felt like the prototype version of Takanuva (and I don’t like orange). and for me, i did get a couple vehicle sets like Mezeka but they were too much like the Technic theme, leaning more into SciFi without the characteristic fantasy elements that large sets like Karzahni had just 1 year prior
That how I always viewed it anyways
personally, I think the torso and head / mask design of the reboot waves were fantastic examples of of innovation, although the sets themselves had too many colours and the CCBS shells mades them feel too simplistic and not greebly enough (neverminding the story), so if they had come up with those designs for the 2008 wave instead of just rehashing the same builds from the previous 2 years it would have likely seen higher sales and not been cancelled before the Glatorians even hit shelves.
Ninjago kind of skews our view of this nowadays, but it’s worth keeping in mind that original Lego themes typically only last around 3 years, tops. Bionicle was the first real outlier.
Long-time fan here - this always seemed like the main reason to me. The franchise was fun, but noone likes an IP that just drags on and on and on. Kinda felt like Farshtey was running out of ideas towards the end, and when G2 flopped upon released, he basically just went “nuts” and dropped the concept entirely.
The GSR reveal was also kinda weird (actually, everything after Voya Nui was - probably should have just ended it there) - these are robots we’re talking about, but the jarring ■■■■■ in scope and setting sent the message to long-time fans that it was time to move on.
Edit: No idea why s h i f t was censored.
The way the filter works, it censors any string of letters that has the same first and last letters as a blacklisted swear word, and that has all the same middle letters in between in the same order as the actual word (even if there are other letters in there as well).
Having a complex story was one of Bionicle’s biggest strengths, the issue was it was spread across novels, comics, video games, movies, serials, and all sorts of other stuff, so if you couldn’t access more than one of those avenues, you were always missing out.
Then let’s see if it blocks out “fire truck.” 
But on the topic of the topic, I definitely agree that the newer, more breakable pieces were a huge factor. I mean, why would anyone want to buy a product that would break on contact? And, even taking that out of it, a lot of the 2008 and 2010 sets were pretty lackluster. I remember my 8-year-old self trying to like the Mistika, but their designs simply weren’t very interesting.
As for the story…mmm…kind of yes, kind of no. There were some pretty huge twists in those later years that, for me, made the world even more interesting, but at the same time, I can kind of see why some people might’ve been turned off. Plus, the sudden turn of events in 2009 to the Glatorian arc was understandably jarring. Right when it looks like the Toa Mata had lost, and they’d have to fight hard to reclaim the universe, they just…jumped to a new story that didn’t seem to have any connections to the MU arc. (Until it did.) I can see why people would’ve been turned off by that.
But to be honest, I never minded as much. Maybe it’s because I was only 8 at the time, but the ending really stuck with me. That whole year’s story seemed to be building up to a final confrontation where Teridax would be defeated for good, but nope. He ended up taking over the universe and exiling Mata Nui’s spirit from it, “never to return.” I still remember reading that last comic and really wanting to know how they could possibly defeat Teridax now. Then when the Glatorian arc came, I liked it well enough, but I didn’t see how it could be related to the MU arc. Then Mata Nui came, and then I saw how it was connected.
But that’s just me.
In my headcanon, it always was a lack of the show which would let anyone enter the story in any moment. Star Wars for example has for this day 9 main movies, 2 antology movies and probably over 20 shows if you count also the LEGO ones. But even if you count only canon creations, it’s a lot to know when new movie appears. Still, it’s not a problem, because if you have Disney+, you can watch everything in one place and even without reading books or comics, you’ll have all the knowledge you need.
Bionicle never got proper show. We had animations from Templar Studios, but they were skipping a lot of story and we had 4 movies, where every single of them was skipping some adventures too. The best way to learn about main story were books, but they were published only in English and let’s be honest, kids don’t read books.
If LEGO ever decide to make G3, it would be good if they’ll just retell whole G1 and re-release all sets with new bricks, but the most important thing: G3 needs to have a proper show like Ninjago did. But less childlish. Bionicle needs to be mysterious, dark and edgy.
SOMEONE hasn’t watched the oni trilogy
Depends who you ask. Many people I’ve met here have read at least some of Greg Farshtey’s books, or at least the web serials that were posted on Bionicle’s website. I do agree that the lack of video media probably contributed, as there was a 4-year gap between Web of Shadows and The Legend Reborn, with the latter featuring a much less dark story and general writing more suited to children’s fiction (after all, Mata Nui never sends cannon fodder off a cliff just to scare viewers). Had Miramax made further movies, they might have been darker and closer to the violence depicted in the stories (at least in Web of Shadows, there are multiple scenes that show dead or dismembered spiders, as well as the death of Sidorak by bludgeoning; and similarly the Toa being forcibly mutated).
To my knowledge, the only thing preventing this during the early 2000s was whether LEGO would permit a more violent movie under LEGO branding, as they generally sell themselves as very family-friendly. There was also the limitations of Miramax’s animation systems at the time - apparently they didn’t have the resources for larger battle scenes until 2005, explaining the lack of actual combat in Legends of Metru Nui despite multiple instances in the comics and web serials that depicted Vahki and the Dark Hunters Krekka and Nidhiki hunting the Toa Metru.