In 2001, LEGO wasn’t doing too well. They were losing money fast, and they needed a savior to prevent them from filing for bankruptcy. So they took an idea that was shoved aside before and started that off.  It was a major hit. It became the best selling line they’ve ever had.

This Toy Line is known as BIONICLE. Bionicle is an action figure toy that allows kids to build a figure using tons of parts. At the time all lego has made was sets made of plain bricks. This was a major step into the company of LEGO.  They made comics, movies, and tv shows based off of bionicles too.  Much later, in 2010 they stopped making the sets due to dwindling interest. So they replaced the Bionicle toys (for ages 6-14) with the Hero Factory toys (for ages 2-6) which removed the line from the teenager market.  So in 2015, they will be bringing back Bionicle, however with the parts of the newer sets.

The first major issue with the new Bionicle sets are that they’re going to be made with the newer parts. Now the older parts did break a little easier, however their complexity is what made them fun to build (left image above). The right image is the new Bionicle 2015 set titled Lewa. As you can see the newer sets are much less complicated. This is a good thing when it comes to wanting kids to buy it. The older sets were much more complicated and made a much better set, but they were for older kids. So just because Hero Factory had more sales than 2010 doesn’t mean they were better sets.  

The second biggest problem is the customizability of the sets. The new sets are just blocks with circles to put armor on. The older sets had much more complicated sets, making them look better. The right arm alone in the picture above had over 30 pieces. The set on the right has about a TOTAL of 30 pieces. So as you can see the complexity is what makes Bionicle better than Bionicle 2015.

So will Bionicle 2015 ruin the saga? For us ‘old schoolers’ it will . . . a lot. However, for the kids that just got into this, they will enjoy it. Even if it isn’t as good as the older sets.