So I was just wondering, at this point, we have dozens of Bionicle fans who work as designers at LEGO. On top of veterans such as @toothdominoes and Nick Vas, we also have a lot of newer members who joined more recently such as @Sokoda , Pohaturon, Aaron Newman, and a few others. Their influence within the company is already felt through the fact that we keep getting so many references and Eastereggs related to Bionicle in sets, we keep getting a tone of pieces useful for Bionicle in Ninjago that otherwise might have never been produced, and most recently, the Tahu CMF. So the fact that they are trying to have an influence is clear. But one thing I still don’t understand. Who exactly decides which sets and themes get produced? If it isn’t the designers, then who is it? Some board of executives that only care about money and what would be financially profitable? But if that’s the case, how do original themes such as Dreamzzz get decided upon? I highly doubt that some 50 yo business executives are the ones commissioning the creation of such themes. And what about the sets that get created within original themes? I sense that designers don’t have nearly as much freedom within existing themes, as even in the new original themes we do get, you can clearly see that they are generally trying to copy the same style of sets as in Ninjago rather than being allowed to explore new ideas and concepts.
I am genuinely curious about this. Does anyone have any insight to share, perhaps after talking to such a designer at a LEGO convention or something?
I have no actual intel, but my gut feeling says it’s mainly a combination of profitability and focus group testing. If it seems like it’s going to make money and the kids (or adults) like it, the theme/set has a chance of being made.
This is probably because Lego is in a financially stable situation right now. Back in the late 90s and early 2000s that wasn’t the case, so they just threw everything at the wall to see what’d stick. That obviously brought a lot of great products, but also many many flops.
These days Lego doesn’t need to worry about money so they could do more experiments, but I guess they don’t want to risk losing any profit - so they just continue making what they already know is viable. Recent flops like Hidden Side and Vidiyo (both rather unconventional themes) probably only strengthen that. It might make the product portfolio feel a little stale, but from a business standpoint this is an ideal situation.
I think this isn’t direct copying, it’s just kinda hard not to draw parallels because Ninjago has literally been everything over the past 15 years. By that I mean Ninjago has explored so many different ideas and themes that others are inherently going to feel similar in some regard, even if it’s not explicit copying. Plus, Ninjago is a stable moneymaker, so see my above point.
Because I’m pretty sure this is your main point again: No, I don’t think Lego will bring back Bionicle in full scale. They’ll continue making more easter eggs or maybe small, one-off sets a la GWP, but the full theme probably won’t make a return. Bionicle as it was just doesn’t really fit into Lego’s current portfolio/image, so they likely don’t see a reason to try it (which would risk losing some of their steady income).
Bionicle was just a lightning in the bottle kind of thing, it was in the right place at the right time. That success can’t really be repeated, and Lego also doesn’t need it from a business standpoint.
Why is it the case then, that they were willing to invest over 10 years of development and so much money into the Smart Play system, when it was clear that nobody wanted that? LEGO themselves ironically kind of acknowledged the fact that the line was dead on arrival when they only decided to release it in only a few select countries. Obviously I don’t know anything about the internal budgeting at Lego but my guess is that the Smart Play system must have overall costed just as much, if not way more than the equivalent of bringing all the G1 molds back, when you consider not only that electronic parts are very expensive to mold and create but the fact that they had to spend a lot of money on research and development in order to actually make the system work! And if that wasn’t enough, they also brought in some of the original Star Ward actors like Mark Hamill to appear in some of the Smart Play commercials, which must have costed even more money!
After the whole Smart Play fiasco, they really have no more excuses as to why they can’t bring Bionicle back in my opinion.
Okay, but in the 2005-2015 period after the crisis of the late 90s and early 2000s, they weren’t struggling financially anymore, they were relatively stable and growing, yet during this period we were getting new original themes almost every year, and sometimes even multiple new original themes in the same year! They weren’t experimenting anymore at that point, sets were following a generally established pattern rather then the wild new ideas of the early 2000s, yet nonetheless we were still getting tons of original themes. So what happened then? The only explanation is that LEGO became a victim of their own succes and especially after 2014 with the LEGO Movie they started to adopt an increasingly corporate mentality, where they started to care more about profit over being original or creative.
To a certain degree, I think it was an attempt to separate Lego from Hasbro and Mattel in terms of product. Hasbro has been putting (possibly excessive) effort of late into moving to mostly digital offerings, Mattel is moving in the same direction. Lego still focuses mostly on a physical product, but they (back in 2016-17) would have seen that kids want more stuff to stimulate them (lights, sounds, apps), so Smart Play was a logical move to allow for the gimmicks that other toy manufacturers frequently incorporate into playsets without sacrificing the overall product (ie. Star Wars sets would still mostly be vehicles that you can put a minifigure into, etc.) and not overly relying on an app that could end up overshadowing the physical product.
Obviously, this has flaws such as set designs being distorted to fit the new electronic parts and bad sound design (and prices that are way too much). But the core idea was mainly to bring back light and sound gimmick features, something that you see a lot of people in various franchises asking manufacturers to do. Had it been similar to Power Functions, it likely would have been more successful, as most of the Bluetooth and power requirements for Smart Play make it seem rather limited (also the fact that LEGO won’t do repair/replacements on those parts in particular, to my knowledge).
Me.
I am John Lego and I decide not to make everyone’s dream Bionicle sets.
Because it wasn’t clear.
I’ve said before I have talked to people inside the LEGO company, including some rather high-ranking folks. The amount of tunnel vision in regards to Smart Play and the smart brick is almost baffling; any argument that the smart brick limited or stifled creativity was dismissed out of hand. LEGO fully anticipated this thing to be a smash hit.
It’s all logistics and actual sales data. Bionicle got burned badly the last time it appeared; the Bionicle Cosplayer minifig is an excellent way to test the waters in that regard, and at that point the Constraction system had a massive library of then-current molds from Hero Factory. There was nothing holding them back outside of a small handful of new pieces to make.
Now, however, Constraction is dead. The ball-and-socket system that does exist is so tied to the standard LEGO System that any Bionicle sets that could be conceived - that would actually look and feel like Bionicle - would either be filled to the brim with specialized pieces or be so large it would price out the key kid market they need to survive, like Bionicle G2’s prices nearly did.
Meanwhile, the smart brick has cross-theme compatibility, doesn’t require nearly as new machines to mold the components as Bionicle G1 did for any given year, and with an expected battery lifespan of fifty years, the cross compatibility this thing would have is immense. You could make Smart Play compatible sets for the next five decades without fear of forcing prior customers out.
Now of course that’s all on paper; reality says the smart brick kinda sucks, is painful to look at, kids don’t care about it, and the price of the sets is a huge turnoff for most people who might otherwise care. But logistically, believe it or not, the smart brick makes more sense than a classic return to Bionicle does.
As for how much money it costed for R&D, most companies see that as completely negligible. If the product pursued is hot enough, who cares what it costs to make? Not LEGO. They’ll just increase prices again because of some unrelated world event that barely impacts them.
Completely true. It’s even more evident when the LEGO Movie 2 did fairly well at the box office, but was detested by so many people it drastically impacted sales, forcing LEGO into a panic over losing the teensiest bit of a profits percentage. And unfortunately that probably won’t change anytime soon.
I was going to say “me”, but ghid beat me to it, so…
Ghid. Ghid does.
one of the ninjago designers stated in instagram that he would have to pitch set ideas to his boss in order for them to get made.
Yeah, I’ve heard that before (not just from LEGO, other companies do this as well). Hasbro does the same system (at least for Transformers) since most products are originated with the marketing teams, then once approved by corporate, they’re then sent to the designers to be executed. While the designers have a good amount of freedom in what they come up with, they are definitely given some level of restrictions to work with (LEGO probably does part count and characters for most themes, Hasbro mainly gives designers a budget for new molds to use on each wave of figures).
Lego honestly has more freedom for the designers precisely because of how many parts are reused. Recolors would be relatively easy to get added to sets because you don’t need new molds, but new parts are definitely an expense to be considered.
I mean, without getting into politics, plastic is made of oil, and, (separately) imports tariffs are an extra cost that are levied onto the companies and thus the consumers.
Are LEGO’s price increases extreme? Yes. But is LEGO’s reasoning for the price increases still technically valid? Also yes.
So, I wouldn’t say that the world events are completely unrelated (without, of course, going into the events in question).
More on-topic, I would definitely say that it’s the LEGO executives who decide what sets get made, and, if some executive has it out for Bionicle, then Bionicle probably won’t return.
While the oil is a legitimate concern, tariffs are as old as dirt, and LEGO has not adjusted their prices for tariffs in any other region of the globe. LEGO has also adjusted their pricing due to wars in regions they do not sell their products heavily in while completely ignoring conflicts in regions they do, even if the geopolitical concerns are just as valid.
The validity of LEGO’s picking and choosing more often than not boils down to societally favorable excuses to raise prices over legitimate risks to their business model. Most times I’m not overly concerned with practices like that because them’s the breaks, but LEGO’s profits are absolutely immense, and their price increases are nearly universally rewarded every time they’re implemented.
Erm, incorrect 
LEGO executive singular. Me. I have injected enough macroplastics into my veins to mutate into John “Kirkbi” Lego and become god of all that is Danish. Tremble before my offshore wind farms and weep at the bloated whales along my shore.
More to the question: How does one become an actual executive at LEGO? Is there some kind of way in which you can climb the corporate ladder from being a set designer to an actual executive with the power to decide which themes get made? Or do they bring in executives from completely unrelated companies that don’t have anything to do with LEGO, and they decide everything based on what they think will be profitable based on current trends?
History with the company helps, although most of the current executives got there through lateral moves from other industries. LEGO, like most megacorporations, is only interested in hiring and promoting those with proven experience in the required fields, and it’s why so many companies swap CEOs and executives around so often.
This is the problem with companies made powerful by the work of one person and then handed over to a controlling board of investors and stockholders who then decides who the one “in charge” is. Rather than rising or falling on the merit of a company head, board-lead corporations are controlled entirely by groupthink with no individuality at all. It’s a big part of why many of them feel so soulless, LEGO being no exception.
even if we go with your logic that both would have the same cost, in what world would LEGO believe that these two have the same potential appeal to general audiences?
One is a single franchise with a very specific appeal that hasn’t been substantially successful since the mid 2000s and is primarily associated with a building style that LEGO has had mixed success with, while the other is a generalized electronics platform with the potential to be applied to a variety of building styles, IPs, and play patterns.
One is a risky venture that will likely have relatively niche appeal even if it’s successful, the other is something with the potential to appeal to a much wider consumer base if executed well.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure LEGO is still family owned and not traded on the stock market.
It’s family-owned in the sense that Kirkbi A/S is family-owned; there’s no indicator that internal stock does not exist and that there are no internal shareholders. I think it’d definitely be much worse if there was public trading on LEGO stock 
Family owned and family controlled are very different… then again, I know very little of internal Lego politics. I also haven’t studied Lego’s administrative side extensively, but I’m willing to wager that a good deal of stuff you see on shelves is cooked in a lab rather than being something from real toy making/enjoying people.
I mean, I would disagree, just given the passion clearly held by those like Chi Wing Lee (a prominent Ninjago designer behind sets like 71861 The Old Town and 71819 Dragon Stone Shrine) for what they’re building (as evidenced by his Brickset). Plus, they hired people like @Sokoda (from the LEGO Ideas project) and Aaron Newman (from LEGO Masters), who clearly hold passion for the sets given their past creations and like of LEGO themes. I definitely think budgeting and market research result in what sets get made, but the actual set design is clearly done by actual fans of LEGO.
True, I never meant to say that there’s absolutely no passion in the company, but rather that Lego isn’t playing as risky and bold with their new stuff as they once did, focusing more on just up charging the surefire hits, instead of trying new ideas like they did back in the earlier days.
It’s also been intimated by people I’ve spoken to that the now 800+ set designers working at LEGO have a significantly easier job than they did a couple decades ago, and most sets get designed in a ridiculously short amount of time. There’s probably something to be said about no limitations stifling creativity, and set designers not needing to make sets as fun due to how easy it is to slap the designs together.
Obviously, LEGO isn’t going to impose limitations on itself and make the job of designing sets harder, so I’m not sure it’s a problem that can necessarily be fixed.
Counter-Argument:
You are right that Bionicle hasn’t been particularly successful since the mid-2000s and that it’s appeal is more niche, but honestly, so is the case with the whole Smart Play system. If we look at LEGO’s track record with electronic-based sets, they haven’t had much success in that field either, with the only possible exception of Mindstorms (specifically the 2008 and 2013 versions) but the newer version that they made of the classic Robotics kit a few years also seems to have no performed so well… Other than that, electronic based products have tended to consistently fail every time, just look at all their app-based/electronic based integration attempts over the years, and how short-lived they have always been: the original late 1990s Mindstorms, Spybotics, the Galidor Kek Powerizer, or more recent examples like Dimensions, Boost, and Vidyio which all failed abysmally… Failures that I can confidently say lost them way more money than G2 did.
You also said you think the Smart Play has the potential to be integrated into LEGO sets more widely, yet every time LEGO tried that, with themes like Ultra Agents, Nexo Knights, or Hidden Side, those experiments just don’t last and ultimately they always just end up returning to making generic sets. On the flip side, a new Bionicle building system that would be primarily System-based, would have the potential to actually be used across other themes more widely… Just look at how CCBS ended up being used across multiple themes as diverse as Super Heroes, Chima, and Star Wars. A system-based Constraction system would, in my opinion, have even more potential to be actually reused across original themes like Ninjago, which already is including a lot of Constraction-like pieces in newer sets!
And ultimately, while it is true that Bionicle is a niche market, it is a market nonetheless; otherwise, why would those knock-off third party Chinese companies continue to produce Bionicle-style sets to this very day? They say that the best successes are often found when one finds a niche and appeals to it. While on the flip side, this Smart Play system, which only got released in 5 countries, has no actual pre-existing fans and would have to build up its success, if there is any to be found, (I don’t think so) completely from the ground-up.
Just because LEGO is really bad at making mixed media products doesn’t automatically make Bionicle a viable or even more viable option on paper. As I said before:
Honestly that post counters most of your arguments with this one
Would be alienating to a great number of people who strongly prefer the original system. While common consensus regarding a Bionicle return to form has grown more favorable in recent history, there are plenty of people who ride on it being a Technic subtheme above all else.
And which would automatically compete with it for attention in the LEGO limelight.
That’s the thing, Ninjago is kind of the all-theme. No matter what you say a Bionicle return could do, Ninjago is likely already doing that to greater success. You cannot convince LEGO to do a lesser version of an existing theme that will undoubtedly sell worse and directly compete with themselves, confusing their own customers.
The other constraction subthemes didn’t do this because they existed within the popular zeitgeist of existing media - there was simply no way any kid was going to get Furno and Iron Man confused.
Nobody is a fan exclusively of Smart Play sets. They’re fans of Star Wars or whatever theme LEGO decides to dump this in next. That’s like saying people are fans primarily of technic stop axles because they bought a set with technic stop axles in it.
I think I’m not alone in saying it’s pretty tiresome where every discussion topic about LEGO’s adjacent properties or corporate structure ends up becoming a topic about how “if Bionicle only came back my way, it’d solve everything.” It’d be better for the Boards as a whole if you made one topic specifically for airing your grievances regarding Bionicle’s nonexistence (which I feel you’ve done already) and leave the other discussion topics for their stated purpose in the title, because this isn’t about LEGO’s decision-making structure anymore. It’s about how LEGO should totally bring system-based Bionicle sets back as an independent theme and the extremely weak performance of the smart brick is the vehicle to get it there.