Review: 7168 Dunkan Bulk

[Still Raindrop]

So, I went to Toys R Us yesterday, hoping that I might find some collectible minifigs. Unfortunately, just as I suspected, my city (the largest in Colorado by area), never even got to see them before everyone else snatched them up (thanks to those who grabbed multiple boxes). I did, however, find two Hero Factory sets: Mark Surge and Dunkan Bulk. Although I was considering getting Surge, I remembered that Bulk wasn't reviewed here, so I thought I would do it.

First off: the canister, showing off Toa Onua! I mean... Dunkan Bulk (early pictures of Onua Mata, even the picture on his canister, made him look kind of silvery in color).

The back of the canister shows Bulk fighting, not Vapor, but Xplode.

Take a look at that helmet. I think it looks wonderful--very powerful, yet also smooth.

Side view

Bulk's torso, which, like his helmet, looks both powerful and sleek.

The Quaza-Stone Hero Core is indeed a beautiful piece, and not an easily photographed one. However, since trans-neon-orange is perhaps the most opaque of the transparent colors, I think it's most easily photographed in this color. So, even though we've seen it before, here it is:

The weapon arm. I really like the finger resting on the trigger.

And the slightly less impressive backside. Much of what we would actually see once it's on the model is still relatively solid, which is good.

This shot may not be the best to show off the model, but I think it looks pretty epic.

The completed model

From the side

From the other side, showing that the hollow part of the weapon arm isn't that bad (although it still isn't the best)

Showing how bulky he really is, in comparison to similarly-sized Bionicle sets.

And in a different light

I think this is a great little set. It's aesthetically pleasing, and fun to play with, though I wish the weapon arm weren't so big and clumsy. I love the way the silver looks, and I think that, if Hero Factory continues this way, it'll be a very good line. I wouldn't consider this an "impulse" set, like some do, and for those of us with low LEGO budgets, it'll be hard to choose among the Heroes. However, I think that Bulk is an excellent choice, and a very cool-looking Hero.

Edited July 17, 2010 by 3D Brickthing
Indexed and poll added

[VBBN]

Great review,

Your images are excellent quality, might I suggest joining the Reviewer's Academy?

Your comparison figure is the same as I used in Surge's review.

IMO this is the weakest set, his mask is my least favorite. I would much rather have had a yellow or orange Hero than a Silver one.

[Captain M]

IMO this is the weakest set, his mask is my least favorite.

Don't they wear helmets?

Nice review though. His colors blend in perfectly together, and there are plenty of new molds. Speaking of which, that torso armor is awesome(If only the rookie team had different torso armor). I don't really like the mask though, it looks like the Bionicle masks from the Kaxium V3 set. Another thing I don't like about it is that the gun-arm-thing Bulk is holding is a bit "hollow" inside. There isn't much to it besides the design on the front. This limits posing, I guess.

Overall, it's a good set. I probably won't be buying it though, because as I said before I don't want to buy a bunch of sets and then end up having nothing to do with them.

Good Review.

Edited July 16, 2010 by Captain M

[VBBN]

Don't they wear helmets?

Yes yes, I am just so used to caling them masks.

Thats what happens when you are with bionicle for 10 years I guess.

[Still Raindrop]

Thanks, VBBN--I might consider joining the Academy; the only problem is, I don't get that many new sets, being a young married man on a small budget.

I agree that it's a weaker set; I would rather have bought Stormer or Furno, but since they only had Surge and Bulk, and since there hadn't been a Bulk review (and I wanted to get a Hero Factory symbol here on EB), I chose Bulk. The funny thing is, I still really like the set, even though I wouldn't have chosen it first.

Edited July 16, 2010 by Mariko

[Aanchir]

Yes yes, I am just so used to caling them masks.

Thats what happens when you are with bionicle for 10 years I guess.

Same issue came up with the Glatorian sets. Really, it's both. It covers the face, therefore it's a mask. It protects the head, therefore it's a helmet. The difference in terminology doesn't really affect what it is.

Anyway, your review of Bulk really helps improve my opinion of him. The armor design never looked sleek to me in the pics I'd seen, but seeing it from different angles it feels very refined. Nice review!

[Brickthing]

Thanks for the review, the pictures show the set sharp and clearly, although I recommend you use a card backdrop rather than carpet as it's slightly distracting.

I have mixed feelings about this set. Although the silver pieces look really good (especially the sleek helmet!), the chest armour and weapon arm don't match the character of Dunkan Bulk. The rivets on steel panel detail is nice, but those two pieces seem the thinnest and have the most hole out of all the Hero Factory armour/arms, which isn't appropriate for the Hero that is supposed to be the strong bulky robot. Is this visually a problem when you have the set in hand?

[Siegfried]

I'm really liking this new line, and I'm looking forward to them turning up locally.

Thanks for the review!

[vexorian]

You can put a mask an axle to connect it to the head's top instead of the mouth, it will still be a mask.

Bulk I think might be the only non-rookie I'll get, the hollow piece is not noticeable and his look is fairy unique among heroes. Yeah, silver kind of became a cliche thanks to bionicle but the trans red-silver combination is nice for something evil imho.

[Still Raindrop]

3D Brickthing, it's not really that much of a problem when I have the set in hand. However, I don't have any other Hero Factory sets, so I can only compare it to the Agori/Stars. He looks and feels solid to me.

In response to everyone's silver comments; I actually like the silver. As a Bionicle fan (from 2001-2003, then again in 2009), I sort of understand the dislike of silver messing with some of the elemental color schemes. Nevertheless, I think that, since Bulk doesn't really have any elemental powers, the silver really works well as his primary color.

[Aanchir]

Well, none of the Heroes have set-in-stone (lol stone) elemental powers, per se. But they are sort of elementally-themed characters with elementally-themed weapons. Dunkan Bulk's weapon is metal-themed, and obviously silver is a good choice for a metal color.

I actually like silver for a reason I've described previously: it gives us three heroes (the rookies) in red, green, and blue-- the three primary colors of light. Then there are three heroes (the Alpha Team) in neutral tones of black, white, and silver.

I actually considered a similar color scheme for a Toa team once, except with dark bluish gray in place of silver and secondary colors that also followed a pattern. The red, green, and blue Toa would have Metru tones as their primaries with the vivid HF rookie colors as their secondaries, while the black, gray, and white Toa would have purple, Keetorange, and medium blue secondaries, respectively. That way the primaries would be close to your typical Inika primaries, while the secondaries would approximately correspond with the light color spectrum of red-yellow-green-cyan-blue-magenta.

I think that one of the most surprising things about Hero Factory in terms of its aesthetics is that LEGO has reverted almost entirely to color schemes free of Metru colors. There's still dark red on X-Plode, but it's not his primary color. To be fair, 2008 and 2009 color schemes for BIONICLE were moving in this direction, but it's still a break from what had been going on for several years in BIONICLE.

I'm not sure what to think of this change. I'm not one to pick between whether I preferred the early years of BIONICLE to the later years in terms of color schemes, and I like it best when the full range of options is available to draw from. Hopefully there will be plenty of the BIONICLE colors we're used to in the "build your own Hero" game on the Hero Factory website.

[vexorian]

Well, none of the Heroes have set-in-stone (lol stone) elemental powers, per se. But they are sort of elementally-themed characters with elementally-themed weapons. Dunkan Bulk's weapon is metal-themed, and obviously silver is a good choice for a metal color.

I actually like silver for a reason I've described previously: it gives us three heroes (the rookies) in red, green, and blue-- the three primary colors of light. Then there are three heroes (the Alpha Team) in neutral tones of black, white, and silver.

I actually considered a similar color scheme for a Toa team once, except with dark bluish gray in place of silver and secondary colors that also followed a pattern. The red, green, and blue Toa would have Metru tones as their primaries with the vivid HF rookie colors as their secondaries, while the black, gray, and white Toa would have purple, Keetorange, and medium blue secondaries, respectively. That way the primaries would be close to your typical Inika primaries, while the secondaries would approximately correspond with the light color spectrum of red-yellow-green-cyan-blue-magenta.

I think that one of the most surprising things about Hero Factory in terms of its aesthetics is that LEGO has reverted almost entirely to color schemes free of Metru colors. There's still dark red on X-Plode, but it's not his primary color. To be fair, 2008 and 2009 color schemes for BIONICLE were moving in this direction, but it's still a break from what had been going on for several years in BIONICLE.

I'm not sure what to think of this change. I'm not one to pick between whether I preferred the early years of BIONICLE to the later years in terms of color schemes, and I like it best when the full range of options is available to draw from. Hopefully there will be plenty of the BIONICLE colors we're used to in the "build your own Hero" game on the Hero Factory website.

I say good riddance actually. But mostly because dark blue and green plastic are awful in comparison with the other blue and green. Hard to explain but it feels cheaper. In fact, I think those are precisely the metru colors we are not seeing anymore. The other metru colors are nice and specially keetorange and sand green very interesting, my best hope is HF would pick a completely different palette that has all 4 "primary" colors (red, yellow, blue, green) and the nicer colors and perhaps new colors.

I actually think it would have been awesome if we had characters in purple and that tone of green that used to be in technic sets until the tarakava and then went completely extinct.

[Aanchir]

I say good riddance actually. But mostly because dark blue and green plastic are awful in comparison with the other blue and green. Hard to explain but it feels cheaper. In fact, I think those are precisely the metru colors we are not seeing anymore. The other metru colors are nice and specially keetorange and sand green very interesting, my best hope is HF would pick a completely different palette that has all 4 "primary" colors (red, yellow, blue, green) and the nicer colors and perhaps new colors.

I actually think it would have been awesome if we had characters in purple and that tone of green that used to be in technic sets until the tarakava and then went completely extinct.

The purple and green you mention at the end of your post are Bright Violet and Bright Bluish Green. Sadly, I think both have been discontinued, although there is still a Bright Reddish Violet, commonly called Magenta by AFOLs, which has been in production for quite a while-- its most recent application was on Lotso from the LEGO Toy Story 3 sets.

I don't mind Metru Green and Metru Blue at all. Officially, they're called Earth Green and Earth Blue-- Earth is the darkest shade LEGO has for its basic color spectrum, with other colors in that shade including Earth Yellow (an obscure color; not sure what it was ever used for) and Earth Orange (original brown). And they certainly aren't any lower quality in most of the sets I've seen recently-- there were some issues in 2004 and 2005 just as there were for Brown (Metru Brown) and Dark Red (Metru Red). Metru Brown got it the worst, though, and all the Metru Blue and Metru Green parts I've seen from the Glatorian, Glatorian Legends, and Stars (as well as non-BIONICLE themes like Agents) have been of ideal quality.

Sorry for rambling; I've been researching LEGO colors for quite a while. You can look at my complete color chart of the colors that appeared in BIONICLE right here.

EDIT: Also, when I describe the shades of the basic LEGO color spectrum, this is what I'm talking about. Basically anything that's a shade of red-orange-yellow-green-blue-violet or one of the tertiary colors in between. Not including obscure colors like "Fire Yellow", "Cool Yellow", or "Dove Blue", but including the arguably more obscure "Light Brick Yellow" because I like the name. Brick Yellow is the official name for Tan, so "Light Brick Yellow" is light tan.

Edited July 18, 2010 by Aanchir

[Zip]

I have to ask- is Bulk's silver the new shade?

[Superrrrfly69]

I have to ask- is Bulk's silver the new shade?

I guess it's replacing the brown from BIONICLE. Yes, his color is silver.

[Aanchir]

I guess it's replacing the brown from BIONICLE. Yes, his color is silver.

No, what they're asking is if it's the new shade of silver that we first saw in the Kingdoms theme. To which the answer is apparently yes, since the review mentions it looking different than older colors of silver.

[Zip]

No, what they're asking is if it's the new shade of silver that we first saw in the Kingdoms theme. To which the answer is apparently yes, since the review mentions it looking different than older colors of silver.

Where did it say that? The only comment about the silver in the review was "I love the way the silver looks". Which doesn't really imply that it's the new shade.

Regardless, I'm guessing that it is the new shade of silver, since Thunder is the new shade too.

[80 Dollar]

Where did it say that? The only comment about the silver in the review was "I love the way the silver looks". Which doesn't really imply that it's the new shade.

Regardless, I'm guessing that it is the new shade of silver, since Thunder is the new shade too.

It is not, only Thunder (As far as I know) has the new silver, Dunkan has the old one.

[Aanchir]

It is not, only Thunder (As far as I know) has the new silver, Dunkan has the old one.

My mistake. I was mixing up this review with your post about Thunder in the HF topic.

Still, I believe the new silver is supposed to be replacing the old one, so perhaps if there's a second production run of Bulks they'll use the new silver.

[vexorian]

Though in this review's pics, silver does look different to me. It may be the lighting though.

[The Dor]

Dunkan and Mark both have the new silver. I have them in hand right now. Ha nevermind I'm dumb. They don't.

Edited July 22, 2010 by The Dor

[Front]

Dunkan and Mark both have the new silver. I have them in hand right now.

I can add that Thunder and Dropship is new silver too.

[VBBN]

Unless I got a mismolding here, my Surge does NOT have the new silver, it's the exact same pearl as the Piraka had, NOT the gunmetal/silver that Thunder has. Bulk and Thunder might, but for my Surge it's a negative.

[Captain M]

Unless I got a mismolding here, my Surge does NOT have the new silver, it's the exact same pearl as the Piraka had, NOT the gunmetal/silver that Thunder has. Bulk and Thunder might, but for my Surge it's a negative.

Since you have Surge too, are his Arms and Helmet different colors from the rest of the blue parts on him?

[VBBN]

Since you have Surge too, are his Arms and Helmet different colors from the rest of the blue parts on him?

Yeah they are slightly lighter, the same issue was with tarix, his feet were darker than his hands.