I thought it was time to get back into writing about BIONICLE. Much has changed since I was last here, but I now find myself with both time and inclination to get back to this blog.
What I'm going to start with is a look at some new figures I've bought in the last little while. And they're not the Star Wars line of buildable action figures. They're from a game called Destiny Warriors. Well, mostly. I think.
I recently discovered AliExpress. I'm not sure how, but I'm assuming it had to do with my researching bootleg BIONICLE on the Web, because that's where I've been buying my cool new toys. It's a little dicier than shopping in North America, admittedly, and if it was just bootlegs, I wouldn't have bothered; but these are actual original figures, with new colours and prints on the old armours and pieces, new builds, and new masks (sort of). I'm in the midst of procuring them at the moment - as it's overseas, the shipping takes quite some time, and I'll admit there've been a couple of times that shipments haven't arrived, for whatever reason. But the refund system is pretty good, and the vendors represented on the site are quick to return your money.
So to get us back into the lovely building system, I thought I'd look at each of these in turn as they arrive. A warning that there may often be weeks or months between these posts - as I said above, the shipping is a little dicier than on the continent. But I've got four figures, so expect at least four of these in the near future.
The first problem I've run into is actually identifying the characters. I've noted they're from Destiny Warriors, but that franchise has 9 installments, and hundreds of characters to go through. Add to this the problem of video game to CCBS representation (a problem for most of these kinds of media to LEGO adaptations), and identification becomes tricky. It doesn't help that the original page from which I ordered the figure doesn't list any names anywhere either. And lists Romance of the Three Kingdoms as the game.
*sigh*
Here's my guy:
The obvious first reason for having bought these figures is the hands:
The other nice thing about this particular figure is the colour scheme. The official CCBS armour does not come in this kind of pale blue, and it makes a nice addition to building Water Toa, and to round out the amount of blue armour one has. It's a colour that is actually pretty sparse.
So what's the model like?
Kinda crappy is my assessment of this particular one. I've been buying bootlegs for some time now, my first ones well over 10 years ago. The one thing they have in common is what I call their Wobbliness Factor. I actually use this as a measure with my own MOCs - one of the ways I judge a figure is on its structural integrity, specifically its wobbliness. This figure is very wobbly. Partially this is due to the quality of the parts. I don't think we really appreciate the precision that is involved in making a toy like this. Consider that BIONICLE and its ilk are made by LEGO, and LEGO professes (or used to) that every element of every one of their sets is compatible with every other element of every other set. Having spent a fair bit of time around LEGO, I can attest to the veracity of this claim. Which means that every single piece has to be perfect. By contrast, most bootleg pieces are pretty close, which sounds okay but actually makes a big difference. My propensity is to replace these wobbly bits, most often in both the CCBS style and original Technic-esque style the ball joints and their sockets.
But that's only part of its wobbliness factor. The other is the build. This one is really, really weird. The body is pretty standard CCBS skeleton, with a small extension added at the bottom to increase the height of the character. Ball joints and limbs are added to hold armour. But have a look at these legs:
That's what each leg looks like without the armour. You can see that the knee joint bends in exactly the wrong direction, unless the knee is actually halfway up the thigh. And then there's that weird contraption of a shin. What it requires is somehow having ball joints on both sides and on the front. But surely there was a better way to do it than this! And then the ankle is two ball joints connected by a 2 length axle. What it all adds up to is a figure that wants to bend its legs along the plane of its body, rather than perpendicular to it.
Moving on.
The arms are neat, and I've adopted them into my own building practices.
In order to accommodate the hands, we have a double socket CCBS limb - one of my favourite pieces, actually. They are very good for combining CCBS and original styles into a single figure. What's really cool is the use of the late-era Hero Factory heads as shoulder joints. It's got a ball joint attached to it that connects it to the rest of the build. What it lets one do is use things like the Hero Factory beast helmets as shoulder armour, which is, it should go without saying, awesome.
Though it's not visible in this picture, the ball joint is a standard black one, as are the ones in the previous picture. Those are unfortunately all replacements with official pieces. I say unfortunately because the joints that came with the figure are cast in white, which really changes the aesthetic of the under-structure. But they're terrible, terrible pieces. The axle holes (another common place of difficulty with bootlegs) are rough and often too small, and for the most part they're not even remotely snug in a socket.
Unfortunately, though the hands look really cool, they're not exactly the best at gripping things. Especially when they look like this:
I honestly can't wait to see what the original of this looks like, if I ever get a chance. I like the use of the Hero Factory emblems as decoration, though I can't unsee them as "h"'s every time, which makes me feel like everything I use them on rolled off the Hero Factory production floor. That aside, it's super-top heavy, hence, in the photo, him supporting it with the other hand.
Aside from the hands, the most prominent feature of these figures is the heads.
The figures are based on characters from a video game, and as far as I can tell the company that makes these has taken a screenshot from one of those games and printed it on a Hero Factory visor somehow. They're kind of cool, and add a nice variety to the kinds of faces one can use in building. It shouldn't be a surprise that the kind of face a MOC has has a lot to do with its personality. These are a good alternative to the more-stylized Star Wars heads, and the more LEGO-like Knights Kingdom heads (and wait til we get to the smaller figure I bought - the head's amazing!).
To wrap up, let's have a look at the parts that came with this set that are different. The skeleton is a medium Hero Factory one, but in white, which is neat. Here's the rest:
The hands and blue armour aside, there's a couple of nice prints to use, some parts in white and dark grey that we don't generally see in the official sets, and some light blue accoutrements that add nice flavour to any build.
Final verdict: Okay? 2.75 Kanohi out of 5? A grade of B-? I don't know. It's not a great figure. Now that I've dismantled it for this post, I'm going to try rebuilding the figure and see what I can do about the design flaws. Or, y'know, just build other cool things with the bits.
I did do one rebuild and "sturdied-up" the figure:
Now I just gotta figure out his name. If you have any idea, I'd love to know. More to come!
