Bionicle 2015 Discussion

[King of Nynrah]

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have more female characters. It's a shame that we only got Kiina in 2009 and not any female fire or ice tribe members, for example. But I don't think there's a high chance of that happening unless they completely change both the marketing style and the target audience for Bionicle. For example, in a wave of six sets with three male and three female characters, the male half are going to sell better because young boys can identify better with male characters, and the majority of young girls probably aren't going to buy sets that look like boys' toys (assuming that LEGO wouldn't make an effort to make the female characters actually look female... remember Hahli Inika and Gali Mistika? shudder)

It kind of makes me wish that:

A) Bionicle would get as much mainstream attention as, say, Transformers, thus increasing public awareness and bringing in a large percentage of female fans in order to change LEGO's mind about this issue

B) Bionicle would be aimed at an older target audience.

A is much more likely than B unfortunately, because it is LEGO that we're talking about here. But who knows what will happen in the story next year? We can only hope.

[TheGreatSpirit]

A) Bionicle would get as much mainstream attention as, say, Transformers, thus increasing public awareness and bringing in a large percentage of female fans in order to change LEGO's mind about this issue

But isn't Transformers still made up of primarily male robots?

​Back on topic, I don't really care about genders in Bionicle, but I also cannot imagine why people care so much over something quite silly in a toy line. Anyhow, this will be my last post on the matter, I don't feel like creating a flame war now

Edited July 15, 2014 by TheGreatSpirit

[Aethersprite]

I don't know much about Transformers, but from what I've seen, even a huge franchise like that only has a couple of female characters. It's not that there aren't any female Bionicle fans, it's just that 1) they aren't the intended audience, and 2) whatever small number of them there are only make up a tiny proportion of people who buy Bionicle. Not enough for Lego to produce multiple characters that are female to specially cater to them. Also, this is just anecdotal evidence - but a friend of mine is a female Bionicle fan, and even she is only into it because she likes the sets; she's perpetually clueless about the storyline.

[TheOneVeyronian]

Is this the right time for me to point out that I'm one of those few female fans of Bionicle? And honestly, back then, I was quite happy they even included females, and the fact that they usually made them blue, normally the colour most stereotypically associated with males (and my favourite colour may I add). Then again I've mostly been interested in typically male or unisex hobbies anyway. I wouldn't mind seeing more females, but honestly, I don't think we're going to see more than Gali and MAYBE a villain to represent the females. I mean, even Hero Factory only had Breez on the female side of things (can't recall any female HF villains right now). Anyway, I'm just leaving this post as food for thought, I'm not going to argue about the matter of the gender divide

[Timeline15]

I wouldn't mind seeing more females, but honestly, I don't think we're going to see more than Gali and MAYBE a villain to represent the females. I mean, even Hero Factory only had Breez on the female side of things (can't recall any female HF villains right now). Anyway, I'm just leaving this post as food for thought.

Unless you count the Queen beast. and I think that Waspix was female in the show. But this whole female issue could be solved if sets were actually made of Toa other than the core 6 elements. Plant life, Psionics, and Sound are all primarily female Toa, if I remember correctly.

[Voxovan]

Plant life, Psionics, and Sound are all primarily female Toa, if I remember correctly.

Toa of Plant Life and Toa of Sound are males. Only Toa of Lighting, Psionics and Water are all females. Also Toa of Light can be females.

Edited July 15, 2014 by Voxovan

[TheOneVeyronian]

Unless you count the Queen beast.

Of course! How on earth could I forget her? Well, to be fair, I'd only been out of bed for about 2 minutes when I wrote that, which is probably why I'd forgot

[TwistLaw]

Look, I didn't give a crap back in the days about characters' gender.

But I have to admit that a couple more Roodakas (aka strong female characters) wouldn't have hurt in BIONICLE's run, especially without oversexualizing them (while I think Roodaka has one of the best builds of the entire BIONICLE saga, it's depressing to see they had to put boobs and heels on a robot to make kids understand she was a female).

Edited July 15, 2014 by TwistLaw

[MakutaDreadscythe]

Of course! How on earth could I forget her? Well, to be fair, I'd only been out of bed for about 2 minutes when I wrote that, which is probably why I'd forgot

Well to be fair they all do kinda have the same face. Just putting that out there.

[bacem]

Of course! How on earth could I forget her? Well, to be fair, I'd only been out of bed for about 2 minutes when I wrote that, which is probably why I'd forgot

you also forget dragon bolt. she was identified as female, if i recall correctly.

[Shakar]

Since I tend to use the official story as a mere background for my MOCs and their story, I tend to change things I don't like- gender ratio being one of them. I had a female Toa of Fire in my story... now that bonkles is back I should probably try to make some MOCs out of that.

[TheOneVeyronian]

Well, to be fair, I tend to take beasts like Waspix (and at a stretch, Dragon Bolt, or at least her species) as being of no specific gender (though I can understand Waspix beasts being potentially all or mostly female, since if they were in a hive system based on wasps, ants etc, most would be female anyway), except Queen Beast, who is identified as female in the name, and her role can really only be fulfilled if she was female.

And with Bionicle, I take the genders stated for official sets as is (so, Tahu is male, Gali is female etc.), but if I'm doing an MOC, it's whatever gender I fancy. If I want a female Toa of Stone, then I build a female Toa of Stone

[Timeline15]

That's kinda the approach I take too. Whatever gender, whatever element. (I even just straight up make elements up, my self Moc is a toa of antimatter for crying out loud). I just decide how I want the character to be. I also take liberties with Mask powers. The mask the Moc wears is not necessarily the mask power they have. I just do it based on what I want their face to look like. (In my mind, the mask is their face, kinda like in the movies).

[davidr]

While I find the gender ideology ...not a very smart thing... , limiting genders in Bionicle was one of the weird things, which don't really make much sense. Greg even answered to a question in the topic where he answers on lego.com, that there can be some exceptions like Orde (= male Toa for a female tribe) in other tribes too. I think this should be one of the things that they should change, romance could be another thing, because it makes some parts of the movies awkward when romance doesn't officially exist. There don't have to necessarily be female sets, just the option to build MOCs that could exist in canon.

[Starparu]

Did anyone notice that the exoforce.ru page no longer has the set list or the exposition on BIONICLE? Seems, at least to me, that this further confirms the legitimacy. If they are affiliated with LEGO, it would make sense for them to remove the names if they are in fact real.

-Star

[Thelegomaster]

When do we usually get photo leaks from catalogues?

[coolcab1]

When do we usually get photo leaks from catalogues?

August or September.

[Agent Fusion]

Sooooon...

[Aanchir]

Uh you guys are forgetting something: Bionicle's target audience are boys. There is NO REASON for there to be an equal amount of boys and girls if the mast majority of buyers are boys. Why do you guys care so much about the female/male difference in a toy line about robots fighting other robots?

EDIT: 101st post, woot!

I care for several reasons. For one, I think society is beginning to evolve and the LEGO Group should do its best not to fall behind. Conventional wisdom dictates that boys generally prefer to play with male action figures, and sales figures generally tend to back that up. But there's no guarantee that this will always be the case, especially with more boys learning to enjoy media with female protagonists like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic or The Legend of Korra.

Also, LEGO is inherently a creative toy, and it's generally a bad idea for official storylines to put a codified limit on kids' creativity. If a kid wants to create a female fire Toa, or a male water Toa for that matter, the official storyline shouldn't dictate that such a thing is wrong or impossible.

And I think we can agree that BIONICLE is about much more than just "robots fighting other robots".

As for your point about female fans... what? I've been a hardcore Bionicle fan since 2007, and never once met a female fan online. I think maybe there were one or two on BZP back in the day who were artists, but that's about it.

I've been active in the online BIONICLE community since 2006 and I can say with certainty that you must not have been hanging around the same BIONICLE fans as I was, because BZPower (one of the chief BIONICLE fansites) has always had quite a bit of activity from female members. Some of the fan community's premier artists and writers are female, as are a number of BZPower's admins (Lady Kopaka, Nikira, GaliGee, Hahli Husky, Turakii #1 Lavasurfer, Brave_Dragon, Jiayi, Kayru, Tufi Piyufi, and Nukaya are just SOME of the women who have at one point had major involvement in the BIONICLE fan community on BZPower). Obviously male fans are the majority, but female fans aren't an insignificant demographic either.

It seems this is often the case with media-driven LEGO franchises, because Ninjago also has a very strong female fanbase. The Hageman brothers, who write the TV series, estimate that about 30% of its viewers are girls, and there are lots and lots of female Ninjago fans on sites like deviantART and Tumblr. Sometimes a girl will not even discover a franchise like this except through her male peers or siblings, but if the franchise happens to have an exciting story and compelling characters, then it's easy for her to get hooked regardless of her gender.

It's not just Bionicle that has a seriously smaller amount of female characters, it's virtually every LEGO theme ever created with the exception of deliberately "girly" themes such as Friends. That's why they exist - LEGO believe that girls are more likely to buy stereotypically girly products than themes like Bionicle that are about warring alien creatures. It's not sexist, it's a sound business strategy that has proven itself time and time again (okay, maybe it is a little bit sexist, but that doesn't stop the money coming in).

This is correct to an extent. Still, as I said, society's attitudes about gender are evolving. Before LEGO Friends existed, not one of the "stereotypically girly products" LEGO put out met with nearly such great success, and the reason is that a lot of parents were stuck thinking of building toys as "a boy thing". LEGO Friends has broken down that barrier, and I think as a result you're likely to see the number of female LEGO fans in general expand in the years to come. And while themes like LEGO Friends might continue to be the main draw for many girls, who's to say that some of them might not also take an interest in "boy-oriented" themes like Ninjago or BIONICLE?

And even boys' attitudes are evolving. I think these days a lot of boys are less likely to think of female characters as gross or lame today than fifteen years ago. That doesn't mean that they'll necessarily be lining up to buy action figures of those characters, or identifying with female characters on an intensely personal level, but in the very least I think they might be more keen on creating their own female characters and telling stories with them, and the LEGO Group should try to accommodate that by reducing the arbitrary restrictions on what colors and elements can only belong to a particular gender.

[Bob C]

Well, I think that LEGO started marketing Bionicle exclusively to boys only after 2004. The Toa Mata were male-oriented, obviously, but there was no extreme boy advertising in that series. I have the 2003 catalog, and in it, Bionicle is not presented in a way that is different from the other themes.

[DuckBricks]

Did anyone notice that the exoforce.ru page no longer has the set list or the exposition on BIONICLE? Seems, at least to me, that this further confirms the legitimacy. If they are affiliated with LEGO, it would make sense for them to remove the names if they are in fact real.

-Star

Good catch... I was digging around for it but couldn't find it. Glad to see it has been officially removed and not just me not looking hard enough... ;)

[Lord-Vorahk]

I think a gender-balance would be good, but hell, if they think it's that worrying to have more female characters, then just give us one more per assortment. Even working off the hopefully-absent gender-locked tribes, getting a set of a Toa of Lightning, or Psionics, would be awesome.

However, the removal of the gender-lock didn't work out that well in 2009. We find out that the tribes can be of any gender, and immediately, the Psionics and Water-coloured characters of Wave One were made male, and none of the other characters were made female instead. Hell, they even made fluff to make sure that the army-builder Skrall couldn't be female, and the Vorox and Zesk were so bestial that they barely counted as characters. It didn't help that Tarix and Berix were so designed that either of them could easily have represented a female character, Tarix having the most slender limbs possible, a Ce-Matoran colour scheme, and his chestplate was a piece that a great many MOCers used as a more conservative replacement for the "Nuvaboob" in female MOCs, while Berix had these for his legs, which are rather effeminate in comparison to the other Avatoran limbs.

And let's not forget the backlash over Orde in 2010.

[Sir Walter Maugham]

*sigh* The gender topic. My least favorite one.

Did anyone notice that the exoforce.ru page no longer has the set list or the exposition on BIONICLE? Seems, at least to me, that this further confirms the legitimacy. If they are affiliated with LEGO, it would make sense for them to remove the names if they are in fact real.

Veeerrry interesting. I'd say all of this has added up to a 100% rock solid confirmation now. I wasn't 100% sure before, but now I am.

Now I want to see what Dorek has to say.

Edited July 15, 2014 by Sir Walter Maugham

[Aanchir]

Veeerrry interesting. I'd say all of this has added up to a 100% rock solid confirmation now. I wasn't 100% sure before, but now I am.

Now I want to see what Dorek has to say.

Probably that this is just what they'd want us to think if they were trying to fool us.

[TwistLaw]

Probably that this is just what they'd want us to think if they were trying to fool us.

I think Dorek's attitude has become July's joke here in Eurobricks.

Birth of an epic new meme I'd say :DD

"Germany won the world cup"

"They're probably trying to fool us, until LEGO says it I won't believe it"