In the opening chapter of LEGO: A Love Story, Jonathan Bender tells us that “there are
roughly sixty-two LEGO bricks for every person on the planet” (7). I look at my own collection, here considering
the elements of the Technic line called Bionicle as bricks, and I think I must
skew that number significantly. At last
count, I have 216 individual sets, and according to the most comprehensive
checklist I’ve been able to find, there are 50 more that I do not have. Even the smallest sets contain about 10
pieces, so Bender's sixty-two per individual, in my household at least, rings
untrue.
The Bionicle series of Technic figures was first released in
2001. I recall very clearly the first
one I bought, one of the heroic Toas named Kopaka. I bought this set and one of the then-recent
Star Wars LEGO sets at the same time, and for a little while tried to keep up
collecting both. As any other fan of
LEGO will attest, this is a fool’s errand; LEGO is expensive. I eventually gave up on the Star Wars sets,
and concentrated my energies on Bionicle.
But why?
Picture courtesy of http://www.b-f-n.nl/d/506416fbb9
I could make the argument that Technic LEGO has long been
aimed at an older audience, so the challenge of the Bionicle sets was more in
keeping with my advanced age (twenty-seven) at the time. I could cite a disappointment with the Star
Wars franchise as a whole at the time, and thus a prejudice toward funnelling
any more of my hard-earned wages into the Lucasfilm coffers. I’m sure that both of these factors played
into my decision, but more than that, Bionicle drew me into a world that, while
robotic and mechanical, spoke to concerns of spirituality and myth that I hadn’t
realized I was missing at the time.
In the beginning, the Bionicle myth involved the awakening
of six Toa, great heroes with elemental powers, on the island of Mata Nui. There they encountered the Tohunga1,
small villagers of the island, and their spiritual leaders, the Turaga. While on this island, the Toa encountered
vicious wild animals of varying kinds, the Rahi, and eventually came to
understand that the island was named for the god of the Matoran, and was being
menaced by an evil entity called the Makuta.
After this, things became decidedly more complex.
What I propose for this series of articles is to explore not
only the story, of which the preceding paragraph is merely the beginning, but
to consider some concerns that are raised by the story, the collection, and the
figures upon which they are all based. I
will look at gender issues that arise from the figures and story, I will consider
more closely the appropriation of Polynesian and Māori culture in the service of a corporation, and I
will look at the ramifications of such a mythic tale that intrinsically
involves free play and creation. As well
I hope to consider the act of collecting of Bionicle, a process in which I am
still engaged. It has become decidedly
less-expensive as the series has been discontinued and models begin to show up
at thrift shops and garage sales. But some
sets continue to be elusive, and the lengths to which one can go to obtain such
sets will be explored.
All this, along with pictures of my collection as I continue
to collect and build through it.
Notes
1. After some controversy over the use of Polynesian and Māori terms in the stories
(Tohunga means “priest”), the Tohunga were subsequently renamed Matoran.
Works Cited
Bender, Jonathan. LEGO:
A Love Story. Hoboken: Wiley & Sons, 2010. Print.
