The Building Chronicle: A Critical Consideration of LEGO's "Bionicle" Series - Introduction

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.