By way of wrapping up my look at 2002, I present the Master Builder/Combiner menagerie. One of my criticisms of the latest wave of Bionicle is its focus solely on characters on the island of Okoto, and not the island itself. In the early years of Generation 1, we were treated to numerous creatures, either made using other sets or as sets in and of themselves. The Master Builder Set, a Lego Store exclusive in 2002, widened the variety of creatures one could encounter on Mata Nui substantially, and they're a lot of fun to build. Rather than try to build a creature using the set pieces and then take it apart to build the next one, I used pieces from my collection to represent all of the possible builds from the set. Some of them turned out quite nicely.
Here we have the Ruki and the Hoto. I had very recently seen my son's drama department production of The Little Mermaid, and it was only when I'd finished building the Ruki that I realized I'd made a Bionicle version of Flounder!
Next is the Makika and the Kofo Jaga. I like the Kofo, and it looks nice displayed next to the previous year's Nui Jaga. It also offers one of the very few instances where it looks like there are particular Genus (Jaga) on the island, comprised of separate species (Kofo, Nui).
Here we have the Vako and the Takea. One of these days I'm going to make a larger version of the Takea (probably just using the same instructions, but with longer lift arms), as I feel like this should be like a Great White Shark in the waters surrounding Mata Nui.
The Goko-Kahu and the Kuna are next. The Kuna is cool, using the lift arms of the set in novel configurations to simulate an undulating snake. It's not the most successful of experiments, but it does the trick. The Goko-Kahu (also called the Kewa) is a strange, bird-like creature. You'll see that I used a Roborider head for this version, as I like the colour scheme, but wasn't willing to clean off the pattern.
The Husi and the Fusa are two of my favourites from this set. Most of the models in this set have actions, except for the very small creatures. The Husi offers amazing poseability, due in part to it's use of the Throwbot build to move it's head. The Fusa is like a boxing Kangaroo Rat, and is a really fun build.
The last three from the Master Builder set are the Hoi, the Fikou (which we've seen last year in black, and which we'll see as a promotional set next year in orange), and the creature that graces the cover of the MBS instructions, the Hikaki. The Hoi is an adorable little sea turtle, and I once made an entire tribe of them that lived under a shelf in my library. I may get the colony started again when I have some clear space. The Hikaki is a cool model, definitely something that one could see interacting with the more mainstream figures and creatures of the series.
Our final three creatures are Bohrok combiners the instructions for which were on the Lego website at the time. The Waikiru is constructed from parts of Pahrak, and is a cute little seal-type creature. The Ghekula, built from Lehvak and Gahlok seems to be part frog, part bull, which is actually a kind of badass mixture. The Keras, constructed from Lehvak and Tahnok is an excellent crab model. There seem to be a lot of different kinds of crabs on Mata Nui.
That does it for 2002. This was the last real glut of creatures on the island. Next year, the story arc becomes highly focussed on the Toa and the Matoran, and though 2004's wave teases an archive beneath Metru Nui filled with strange creatures, we only get model representation of a few. But first, Makuta makes his move, the Rahkshi storm the island, and a storyteller fulfills his destiny.
