Aanchir

Eight episodes for Nexo Knights? Well, that's the shortest TV series created by Lego. Congratulations for setting a new record. 

It's actually ten episodes, and this is just the season one finale! Not the series finale!

Since two new LEGO Ninjago promotional songs were just released by The Fold, I was curious which of their Ninjago songs from over the years were people's favorites! To date they've released 15 original songs along with four remixes of the theme song The Weekend Whip. Since the number of answers per poll question is limited, I split it into two questions: which is your favorite promotional song, and which is your favorite version of the theme song.

Links for those who haven't heard the songs before or want to refresh their memory:

The Weekend Whip

Born to be a Ninja
Ninja Go!
A-W-E-S-O-M-E

Rebooted Tech Whip
After the Blackout
Full Digital
We Are Ninjas
Spinnin' Out In Color
Eye of the Storm

The Anacondrai Whip
21st Century Ninja
The Ninja Roll
Enter the Tournament
Back to Ninjago
The Ghost Whip

Bring on the Pirates
We Are Ninjago

Anyway, feel free to share your thoughts!

EDIT: Link added for "The Pirate Whip"!

Probably not. Unless LEGO realizes the mistake they made throwing away it, and Pharaoh's Quest, and Alien Conquest, and Dino, AND Power Miners,  (all of which were connected) and make a big combined theme with those, we probably won't.

Was it really a mistake, though? Think about it this way. LEGO can't continue to introduce more and more new themes while keeping every other theme they have running. If Power Miners and World Racers had continued into 2011, then Pharaoh's Quest, Alien Conquest, and/or Ninjago might not have been able to exist. If Atlantis, Pharaoh's Quest, and Alien Conquest had continued into 2012, then Dino and/or Monster Fighters might not have been able to exist. If Dino and Monster Fighters had continued into 2013, then Legends of Chima, Galaxy Squad, and/or the 2013 Castle revival might not have been able to exist. Discontinuing existing themes is the only way LEGO can free up the time and resources to introduce new ones.

Last week Lyi and I started watching Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir. Fantastic show! A bit formulaic at times, as is to be expected with a "monster of the week" storyline, but the beautiful animation, scenic Parisian setting, and incredibly charming characters make it all worthwhile!

It's on hiatus right now but the creators promise on social media that it's not cancelled and is coming back soon.

Rebooting Bionicle again would be the dumbest thing Lego could do at this point.

G2 has little to no story to go off of right now, so all Lego really needs to do is start filling in the blanks.

 

If Lego just starts rebooting a story-based toyline over and over, they risk ending up like DC Comics with their bazillion reboots.

Frankly, even DC Comics even tends to reboot its ongoing storylines more sparingly than that. Their two major comic reboots (Crisis on Infinite Earths and Flashpoint) happened when they were worried about the continuity becoming bloated or contradictory, not just when they thought things were getting boring. Generally their solution when a storyline seems boring has been to write newer and more interesting stories in the same universe, not to reboot the universe at the drop of a hat.

 

But Matoro didn't come back from the dead like Zane did, so technically Zane didn't pull a Matoro.

 

Yeah, in that respect, it's probably fairer to say that

Is there anything about this series you think you would have done differently in hindsight?

What was the biggest challenge for you in creating this series?

What attribute of this series are you most proud of?

 

 

Quake Beast can control Earth and nothing more.

Not entirely sure why there's a big debate over it.

Could you state your evidence for this?

 

IMO, the proof is in the name.

I think lots of people are over analyzing this, and just grasping for straws at this point

 

But the name is just "Quake Beast", not "Earthquake Beast"! For all we know, it could be referring to waterquakes or icequakes or firequakes or junglequakes!

Oh, I'm sure minifigures are going to happen... I'm willing to bet that now that Lego has the license, this franchise is going to show up in Lego Dimensions pretty soon...

Yeah, it's not a Disney or Activision IP so there aren't any licensing obstacles to putting it in LEGO Dimensions. And like a lot of the LEGO Dimensions IPs, it appeals a lot to both adults and kids.

If they do Dimensions packs, a Finn minifigure would be a no-brainer, but I kind of wonder if Jake would fit better as a brick-built character like the Flying Monkey, since then the "rebuilding" aspect could reflect his transformation ability.

In any case, within the context of this Ideas project, brick-built characters seem like a great way to recreate the diverse, wacky, and colorful cartoon character designs. It'll be interesting to see which characters end up in the final set and at what scale.

As for the Caterham Super Seven, it's a nice-looking project that I'm sure will make a good set, though I've gotta admit I had never heard of this car until this news. So I don't have any particular interest in the set.

The only themes that stand a chance of a reboot are big bang themes.

I wouldn't say that. Space Police has been brought back twice, and Pirates and Castle are regularly refreshed. In terms of licensed themes, Harry Potter also made a comeback in 2010 after being on hiatus since 2007. And the Super Heroes theme effectively revived Batman sets (which hadn't been around since 2008) and Spider-Man sets (which hadn't been around since 2002).

Do all of these count as "reboots"? Tough to say, since most of them don't have a really discrete continuity. But I think they still fall under the umbrella of what this topic's about.

Nah I agree, I understand what the marketers are saying with easy to understand conflicts, but I'd like to see a return to more placid, exploration-based sets and designs. Stuff like the City theme often gets, but like, all techowonder futureland-y.

 

I guess you could kinda do both. Planetary Survey theme with humans/aliens exploring and encountering brick-built alien fauna and capturing/analyzing/observing/whatevering them.

The thing to keep in mind though is that LEGO Space has never been totally placid and exploration-based. Conflict play was a part of the designs from the beginning, even if the designers had to be a bit covert about it to get their designs approved in the age when the LEGO Group's anti-violence policies were so much stricter.

Some quotes from an interview with classic Space designers Niels Milan Pedersen and Jens Nygaard Knudsen in Issue 6, Volume 2 of BrickJournal magazine:

Explains Jens... "We started with only Red and White figures, we considered the red ones to be the 'bad' guys, and that they were two competing factions."

Side note: some things I've read and heard from designers actually suggest that colors might have specifically been meant to signify Soviet cosmonauts and American astronauts. Furthermore...

"The original two colors were explorers, yellow were scientists, blues were technicians or mechanics, and I guess the black were warriors, but we were not allowed to make a big deal out of this. We were not allowed to make war."

 

Niels nods in agreement at this point. "There were a lot of disagreements about the aerials and other elements that pointed forwards on the ships because of the 'no war' policy." Jens takes over, "We were not allowed to make weapons, and these things we built looked aggressive, so there were a lot of 'radar dishes' added and 'sensor probes', but to us they were really guns!"

Overall, by including conflict play in Space themes, the LEGO Group is not really going against the design intent of those early themes. They're mostly just being more sincere about it. Acknowledging that yes, a lot of kids playing with LEGO Space are going to want to act out conflict scenarios, and that no, that isn't necessarily something that should be discouraged.

It's possible that at some point a more exploration-based Space theme might be possible, but I think it hinges partly on what media kids are exposed to sci-fi through. A lot of the sci-fi media kids experience today is pretty heavy on laser gunfights and other forms of space conflict. Space stories like The Martian that are more peaceful do exist, but generally have less of a fantasy element to them and aren't really aimed at kids.

 

i think life on mars deserves a reboot. it holds a certain significance (at least, to me) as being the only space line where the goal of the human and extraterrestrial characters doesnt involve violence between each other, but cooperation and friendship. i know being able to swoop a spaceship around and have heroic humans defend themselves against antagonistic aliens is fun to roleplay and is usually a fun concept i guess? but i feel like theres some merit in considering something ... less violent, i guess, especially considering how many of legos other themes are also more action-based. at the very least, it could have humans and aliens teaming up against a common threat, instead of having a weird divide of humans vs aliens

 

plus, we could see some sweet mech designs, hopefully in interesting colours. a return of sand red and sand purple would be out of line probably, but we could still see robotic sets and vehicles in colourful shades similar to life on mars, as well as cute new martian minifigs

The problem with Life on Mars, I think, is that there wasn't any obvious conflict to help drive the plot. Yes, there was one in the actual story (with one traitorous martian trying to sabotage relations between the martians and humans), but that kind of political intrigue doesn't really resonate with kids and wasn't even self-evident in the set designs—it was years before I realized the blue martian was the "bad guy" in the story.

 

I think a new theme with human and alien collaboration is definitely possible in the future, but even if you did do something like that you would still need to have some sort of conflict play in order to create a more obvious story structure. A theme like Space Police could easily achieve that simply by including both humans AND aliens teamed up for both the police AND criminal factions. Granted, you'd want a more unified design language for the villains in that case (to make clear which side every character was on), but you could still achieve that by making both the police and criminals uniformed factions—Blacktron, anyone?

 

The blue martian (Centauri) wasn't the bad guy. The red martian (Arcturus) was the bad guy. His red eyes and pallid green skin certainly did make him look more evil than the others, though you're right, it wasn't totally self-evident just by glancing at the sets or boxes.

It could be that, but when we see the Toa

looking out across the ocean to Okoto at the end of Trials of the Toa, it appears fairly far away.

However, that could just be a visual error.

I sort of interpreted that discrepancy to mean that there might just be a lot of those sorts of statues around different parts of Okoto's coast. In which case the Easter postcard from the LEGO Bionicle Facebook page probably doesn't depict the exact same statues or the exact same coast, just statues of the same type.

Excuse my ignorance, but are these actual novels are just graphic novels? If actual novels, is there a legal source for non-Kindle format?

Gathering of the Toa and the not-yet-released Battle of the Mask Makers are both graphic novels. Island of Lost Masks and Revenge of the Skull Spiders are regular prose novels/chapter books. You can either order them online from a site like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books-a-Million, look for them in large brick-and-mortar bookstores like Barnes and Noble or Books-a-Million, or go to a bookstore like those and request to have them shipped to the store.

In countries besides the United States, ordering them online might be your only option, since I'm not aware of any international editions.

Is there no technic coverage?

Technic was covered in this story, though some of the most impressive sets for later in the year were not on display.

It's a shame copper & the metallic colors used in prints are not appealing enough to kids, having more metallic pieces would be nice.

I don't know how much of it is "not appealing enough to kids" and how much is just LEGO not expecting to get enough use out of the colors to justify their existence. Getting new colors approved for use in LEGO is not easy. Back around 2003 when LEGO was in the midst of their worst financial crisis, one of their problems was that their color palette had ballooned wildly out of control, with some colors that were hardly even being used in sets. Consider, for instance, the metallic colors used for the Rahkshi backs, feet, and faceplates — you could count the number of sets many of those colors were used for on one hand.

The LEGO Group realized that they had to review their color palette, get rid of extraneous colors, and make sure the colors they kept were of sufficiently consistent quality. Among other things, it was during this process that Grey, Dark Grey, and Earth Orange (Mata Brown) were replaced with Medium Stone Grey, Dark Stone Grey, and Reddish Brown. In terms of metallic shades, LEGO had more than a dozen metallic plastic colors back in '03. Today they've whittled that down to three (Warm Gold, Silver Metallic, and Titanium Metallic).

It was hard work getting the LEGO color palette back under control, and LEGO isn't in any hurry to go down that road again. Chances are, few of the colors suggested in this topic are likely to make a comeback unless they're still on the LEGO Group's color palette. If it's been more than two or three years since a color appeared in any LEGO theme (not just Bionicle), then chances are it's been retired and isn't coming back.

Most of my activity is in LEGO Discussion but I also do a fair bit of posting in News Discussion, here in General Discussion, in Completely Off-Topic, and occasionally in the creative forums (mostly when I see something there that piques my interest).
 
I voted that I was unable to generalize about the site's variety of forums. There are some divisions that I think are frankly quite useful, and others that I think could stand to be trimmed down. For instance, I'm not sure how relevant the Comedies forum is anymore now that tags are a thing. I feel like I would feel more motivated to read comedies if they were grouped together with other stories and tagged as comedies than with them sequestered off on their own. And with increasing amounts of storyline discussion in the Bionicle Discussion forum I'm not totally sure how much sense it makes to keep those ones separate. At the same time, I don't think the variety is "intimidating", necessarily, nor is it "not important". It just isn't always intuitive or optimal for the present state of the community.

Featured news stories, friends' projects, and social media posts can steer me towards forums I don't check or post in regularly. So can boredom and curiosity. I don't check Fan-Created Media often, for instance, because there's not often stuff there that interests me. But it's the kind of thing that if there were stuff there that interested me, I wouldn't want to miss it. So I check every now and then just to make sure that if somebody has started making, say, original Bionicle music, I can give it the attention it deserves.

But frankly there are some forums that pretty much nothing motivates me to check, like the "Games and More" and "Buy/Sell/Trade" forums. This is not to say I don't think these forums matter to BZPower, or that I'd have more interest in their content if it were somewhere else. I just don't particularly want to take part in those kinds of topics, and don't think I'd gain much from visiting them unless I intend to take part. Those are all very participation-based forums.

Man I hope those are a good 88 minutes... I am nervous to see the first few episodes this weekend; I just don't want another film adventure with "Kohli Heads of "Fulfil your destiny" Island"...

Frankly, I loved the tone and story of Bionicle: Mask of Light. It didn't try to apologize for being a kids' story, but at the same time, it had a good emotional range, with a balance of thrills, fear, sadness, and relief. It wasn't afraid to give its characters real insecurities. There are definitely some places where it failed to stay true to established characterization (particularly Onua, who had previously been characterized as quiet and wise, and was characterized in Mask of Light as loud and boisterous), but all things considered I felt like it was a very good movie, and that subsequent Bionicle movies had a hard time living up to it in some respects.

We already know that The Journey to One will be somewhat different than Mask of Light simply by virtue of focusing on the Toa and not on the cute and spirited islanders they protect. But I hope it doesn't take itself too seriously.

Remember also: back when Bionicle was one of the LEGO Group's top themes, it was in part because so many of the LEGO Group's other themes were failing. Back then, Duplo had been absorbed by the much weaker Explore brand, System themes were heavily simplified in hopes of appealing to kids with short attention spans, and licensed themes struggled to keep their sales up in non-movie years. It's not outside the realm of reason to think that even if Bionicle did every bit as well in 2015 as it did back in the day, it might not have had a decisive sales advantage over the present state of the Star Wars, City, Friends, Ninjago, and Duplo themes. I don't know if Bionicle will ever again reach the level of success it did back in 2001–2004, or what it would need to do to make that happen. But I doubt it will ever be the kind of essential lifeline it was for the LEGO Group back then. Not when they are doing so well with so many of their other brands.

Anyway, the success of City and Star Wars is never surprising, but it's good to see that Friends and Ninjago continue to perform well. It's interesting that Elsa's Sparkling Ice Castle was the top-selling set even though the Disney Princess theme was not one of the five top themes. Perhaps LEGO should take some cues from the success of the Frozen sets and try to make the Disney Princess theme more well-rounded. The Frozen sets typically have a good balance of magic, adventure, and humor, whereas other Disney Princess sets sometimes focus rather myopically on luxury and romance. It also makes me wonder if LEGO might try to have sets capitalizing on this year's movie Moana sooner after its release, instead of waiting a whole year after its release before releasing any sets.

I love how people think G1 and G2 aren't connected. They clearly are.

They might be, in the future. Presently, no firm connection has been made. Many people have different opinions on whether it'll stay that way. Some people would say they're clearly working towards a connection, others will say they clearly AREN'T working towards a connection. Some people will say nothing is clear at all. It all depends on your perspective.

I honestly think both extremes could stand to be a little less condescending and understand that not everybody sees things the same way. But no matter what you believe, the present state of things is that it's impossible to say for sure that they're a part of the same timeline, so it's not fair to say the Bionicle timeline has been "ruined". Even if they did decide link the two stories, it could be as alternate universes, or something else where they're not a part of the same timeline.

Something I didn't see mentioned is that the sculpt of the new back piece limits all neck articulation. I have Kylo Ren and Finn and they can't even turn their heads to the side.

While Finn's neck articulation is somewhat limited, I'm not totally bothered by it. Because of the way his neck joint is molded, he can still tilt his head back about 45 degrees and turn his head around 30 degrees to the left or right. Rey's neck articulation bothers me more because she can't really tilt her head back at all. So if, for instance, you wanted to build a version of her speeder scaled to this figure, you wouldn't be able to pose her correctly on it because of the jockey-like stance she's supposed to have when riding it. This would not have been such a serious problem if she didn't have the headwrap.

Overall, with how the gearbox is constructed, I can't think of any way that a combination neck joint and back plate could have been created effectively without these kinds of limits on articulation.

Woulda loved to have seen her without the headwrap seeing as she only wears it for a small part of the movie. Ah well. That blaster is fantastic in its simplicity, though. Really dig it.

Yeah, while the head with headwrap looks nice, it somewhat limits the neck articulation as well as the part's versatility in MOCs. Without the headwrap it would've been easier to use the head as a generic head for non–Star Wars creations, much like Finn's, Obi-Wan's, or arguably even Luke's (though aesthetically his is the weakest of the four). Also, it's a bit peculiar that she has the headwrap (which she only had on Jakku) as well as the blaster (which she only had on Takodana), though that's not a huge issue.

I think the blaster and staff are very well realized, and I do not totally mind the lack of a lightsaber since she has two other weapons. Her outfit, too, feels very authentic, even though the colors are a bit off from the movie version (in which her pants were a darker color than her top rather than the other way around). Some concept art of Rey does have the colors more like this constraction figure, which leads me to wonder what the development time for it might've been.

The biggest drawback of this set not mentioned in this review, as I see it, is that unlike Finn, Poe, and the First Order Stormtrooper, she does not have System parts to fill out the back of her shins. However, on the plus side, the alignment of her thigh shells makes her knees less knobbly-looking than those of Finn and Poe. And the $5 lower cost than Finn or Poe makes cut corners like that more forgivable IMO. And it would be easy enough to get the System parts you would need from other sets.

Her proportions are generally very lifelike and feel accurate to the character. Aside from her head, she has very good articulation. She also offers some very useful parts for building original creations. I appreciate that LEGO has treated the Rey character with respect throughout their Star Wars product line, since there have been so many issues with other toy companies having her play second fiddle to male characters like Finn or Kylo Ren. Overall, this is the LEGO Star Wars buildable figure I'd be most likely to recommend to others. Good review!

I went with "no". I would not be entirely opposed to a connection. But if LEGO did go that route I'd want it to be handled VERY delicately. Perhaps I should have gone with "neutral", since I'm certainly OK with either possibility, but it's not like I don't care at all one way or the other. I definitely think there are more ways that linking the generations could go wrong than keeping them separate. Keep them separate, and the worst case scenario is that one generation won't live up to the other. Link them, and you run the risk of sabotaging either or both generations. Once they're linked that's not something that can be easily undone.

A lot of the "connections" I've heard other BZPower members propose involve things like gratuitous and out-of-nowhere cameos from characters like Vezon, making one generation the future of the other, etc. — things that I think would make it hard not to confuse newer fans or do a disservice to one or both generations.

I'm working on a short story right now that demonstrates one possible connection that I don't think would be too confusing or introduce too much baggage. Not the only way I think it could be handled, mind you. Not even necessarily the best way. But one that I think would manage not to confuse new fans too much or alienate older fans.

I am a little confused about some of the above posts: they make it sound crazy that LEGO would make a toyline based off of a well-known story not designed to sell toys, but it's called licensing, and LEGO does it all the time. Consider themes like Star Wars and Marvel that are based off of popular stories not intended to be made into toys, yet LEGO decided to license them anyway. The main difference here is that LEGO would be "licensing" its own story -- which is hardly heresy.

I'm not saying or implying that LEGO would never make toys based on a story not designed to sell toys. You're right, there's nothing heretical about that. What I'm saying is that they wouldn't make a story THEMSELVES unless it was designed to sell toys.

When LEGO makes licensed themes, they base those themes on stories OTHER people and companies have created. They don't have to fund and manage the production of the Lord of the Rings movies to make Lord of the Rings sets, or fund and manage the production of Batman movies to make Batman sets. But Bionicle belongs to LEGO and I don't see that changing. So for Bionicle stories without any sets attached to exist, LEGO would have to fund and manage those stories, without any kind of toy line to guarantee strong and immediate returns. That isn't going to happen. There's no reason it should happen.

Again, LEGO didn't get to where they are by treating their core business — toy design and sales — as an afterthought. Nor did Bionicle become as successful as it did by that approach. On the contrary, bad things have happened when they've tried to create types of experiences that don't directly promote their toys. LEGO Universe being just one recent example.

 

 

Y'know what I really think needs to be done? I think there needs to be more official artwork of Okoto. That's kinda what made the island of Mata Nui feel so mystic to me was all of the artwork of the diverse environments. It really established the mystery and serenity of the island. MNOI & II also kinda established that as well.

I agree artwork makes a big difference in making a world more immersive, but to be honest we have gotten quite a bit of artwork for Okoto thanks to the Facebook page, the background art from of the packaging, and the webisodes. I mean, just take a look at BS01's Okoto gallery. That's all from one year, and doesn't even include things like the "Month of (element)" and "Happy Easter" art from the Facebook page, or scans from the graphic novel — all of which gave us new glimpses into Okoto's scenery.

 

The main thing we don't have this generation are video games like the Mata Nui Online Game that let you experience the island firsthand. I can't pretend I don't miss that kind of immersive gameplay. The two mobile games so far are not too bad in terms of gameplay but offer hardly any kind of world-building due to their repetitive arena-style level design.

 

 

 I have to agree with you on this part, the video games for this generation of Bionicle are terrible. It's seems more like a attention-grabber for kids rather than a game like MNOG, but I guess Lego has a different viewpoint on games as compared to the past. At least we can be grateful that they are willing to do a Netflix series for Bionicle and not continue with the 2015 animations.

 

I wouldn't say the video games so far are terrible. I don't particularly enjoy them, but they seem pretty decent for free action games. We have to remember that LEGO struggled to make another game like MNOG and then seemingly stopped trying after a while. Even in the last four years of G1 we never got another game with the same level of world-building. I definitely enjoy the G2 Bionicle mobile games better than any of the G1 Bionicle online games from 2007–2010.

As great as the Mata Nui Online Game was for us, it's hard to say how effective it actually was at promoting the sets and story, let alone how effective a game like that would be in this day and age. A mindless action game might not be as good at telling a story as an adventure game, but if it's less expensive to produce and more kids play it, then it's arguably more effective as a marketing tool. And let's be honest, have you ever seen any OTHER toy series put out an adventure game of the same caliber as MNOG? I haven't, and maybe there's a reason for that. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that action games are just better for selling action figures.

If we are only going to get action games, I wouldn't mind one like the Hero Factory Breakout online game from 2012. That offered a VERY immersive experience compared to the two apps we've gotten. Beautiful level designs, great character customization, and a good balance of fighting and exploration. However, it was not optimized for mobile devices — the app version was a much more watered down version with just one character, one map, an isometric view, and no character customization. Since a lot of the games kids interact with the most these days are mobile apps, investing in online games that can't translate effectively to mobile devices might be something of a liability.