Atlantis Backstory, Where Can I Find It?

[Hey Joe]

The Atlantis site on Lego.com isn't available any longer, what a total bummer!

Just this past week I bought the last set that I needed to complete my Atlantis collection but I can no longer go online to get the backstory? Does anyone know where it might still be viewable?

It seems highly capricious (to put it politely) of Lego to take down all the Atlantis material that they had posted now that they're no longer directly selling the products.

[Rez]

Keeping sites up costs money, and promoting a line you're no longer selling is bad business. I agree it's a bummer, but it's how most toy companies operate!

Underwater themes are my favorite, can't wait to see whatever pops up in a couple of years!

[DraikNova]

Well, there's the movie and there wasn't much background information at all about the second wave, which involved "Dark Creatures" taking over Atlantis, while the golden statue needed all five crystals to repel them. The divers got locked up with him by the way, according to the game at least.

[Kai NRG]

Here on Brickpedia there is a good bit of information, under the story heading.

[Hey Joe]

Keeping sites up costs money, and promoting a line you're no longer selling is bad business. I agree it's a bummer, but it's how most toy companies operate!

Underwater themes are my favorite, can't wait to see whatever pops up in a couple of years!

I hear you about the toy biz, today's hot item is tomorrow's closet fodder, right? Thinking of my own two sites that I keep up for really no purpose (because I may need them in the future and they don't cost much) I thought that your argument didn't hold water BUT I guess that a large company like Lego would incur some costs in the long run in maintaining a large amount of microsites for old products they no longer sell. Perhaps it's too much to ask for them to leave something for posterity's sake (but I don't think it is).

Underwater themes are really cool aren't they? When I first got into Lego about a year ago I was a little skeptical of Atlantis (not sure why) but the more I looked at the quality of the models and minifigs and just the whole premise of the theme, I was hooked.

Well, there's the movie and there wasn't much background information at all about the second wave, which involved "Dark Creatures" taking over Atlantis, while the golden statue needed all five crystals to repel them. The divers got locked up with him by the way, according to the game at least.

Thanks, I downloaded the movie and really like it a lot. It was rumored that it would be a series, too bad that didn't come to fruitition, isn't it?

Hereon Brickpedia there is a good bit of information, under the story heading.

Thanks, I remember having seen that before and now that I've seen it again I guess that there's a good amount of info in there. I've been buying the models mainly for my son (hey, it's a convenient excuse that works on the wife so don't laugh ) but he's a little too young right now, I need something for him when he gets older. Guess I'd better copy that page in case it gets taken down too.

Edited October 28, 2012 by bjtpro

[Miles]

I've actually gotten in the habit of saving as much information from LEGO websites as I can (when I find a theme that I like). I use Downloadhelper through Firefox, and I can save animations, sounds and quite a bit of other stuff. No games, though. ) I've just recently come out of my dark ages, so sadly I never got to see the Atlantis site. I bet it was awesome, though.

Another thought might be the Internet Wayback Machine? I couldn't for the life of me tell you how to navigate that, but maybe you could at least pull any written information from the site. (If it can be accessed.)

[Nintendawg]

Keeping sites up costs money, and promoting a line you're no longer selling is bad business. I agree it's a bummer, but it's how most toy companies operate!

This really, really bugs me too. The second something is discontinued most companies just pretend it never existed. Web hosting of course costs money, but Im highly doubtful that is the reason considering the size of the thousands of PDF instruction files they have on their servers. My guess is that they want to prevent any customer confusion. Still, why couldn't they have a little archive section. Tuck it away at the bottom of the themes page under "discontinued" or something. That would be better.

@ Miles - Someone asked about saving the Harry Potter section of site the other day. If you read http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=75141&hl= theres some details on snagging the content (games too!)

[Rez]

It's 100% money wasted. There are costs of keeping various pages up. They figure that all the countless fansites can handle the information aspects of the line- there's money they don't have to waste. Finally, an archive, while a nice idea for US, actually hurts them. If a kid logs on to the site for the first time and sees a bunch of old sets he wants but can't buy, then what happens? Parents will resort to ebay, or bricklink, or whatever they can to try and make the kid happy. Lego makes 0 money, loses a sale for current lines the kid might have wanted, and has to spend time and money putting up even more webpages.

Properties or toylines can also be "contaminated" over time- the simplest and fastest example that springs to mind is if you put a group of kids in a room full of toys, if the boys start playing with something and then, after a few minutes, the girls start to play with it as well, the boys instantly drop it and move on to something else. It's an oversimplified example, but it illustrates the point. Toylines trend, and it can ultimately hurt the company behind it if they keep it going for too long. If we see a line that looks wildly popular, in many cases it is actually past the height of it's popularity and it's best to cut and run while you can. There are exceptions, yeah, but you have to keep in mind that these exceptions are very, very rare.

I'm in complete agreement that I don't like it, but I 100% understand it.

[WhiteFang]

Not sure if it will helps, but I think there are some videos of the cartoon series lying around somewhere in the Internet. It may help to refresh a little.

[Faefrost]

This might also help you. The Atlantis movie.

It doesn't really go past the first series portal set, but does give a lot of the backstory.

[Devorath]

It's 100% money wasted. There are costs of keeping various pages up. They figure that all the countless fansites can handle the information aspects of the line- there's money they don't have to waste. Finally, an archive, while a nice idea for US, actually hurts them. If a kid logs on to the site for the first time and sees a bunch of old sets he wants but can't buy, then what happens? Parents will resort to ebay, or bricklink, or whatever they can to try and make the kid happy. Lego makes 0 money, loses a sale for current lines the kid might have wanted, and has to spend time and money putting up even more webpages.

Properties or toylines can also be "contaminated" over time- the simplest and fastest example that springs to mind is if you put a group of kids in a room full of toys, if the boys start playing with something and then, after a few minutes, the girls start to play with it as well, the boys instantly drop it and move on to something else. It's an oversimplified example, but it illustrates the point. Toylines trend, and it can ultimately hurt the company behind it if they keep it going for too long. If we see a line that looks wildly popular, in many cases it is actually past the height of it's popularity and it's best to cut and run while you can. There are exceptions, yeah, but you have to keep in mind that these exceptions are very, very rare.

I'm in complete agreement that I don't like it, but I 100% understand it.

Keeping sites up costs money, and promoting a line you're no longer selling is bad business. I agree it's a bummer, but it's how most toy companies operate!

Underwater themes are my favorite, can't wait to see whatever pops up in a couple of years!

Yet Bionicle.com still is around.

[Aanchir]

Yet Bionicle.com still is around.

BIONICLE.com is a very interesting case, given that it was a tremendously long-term theme that accumulated a lot of dedicated fans. I'm sure the fact that the BIONICLE site's webmaster (Kelly McKiernan) happens to be a former admin of BIONICLE fansite BZPower played no small part in the decision to keep BIONICLE.com around-- after all, there's nothing like having somebody on the inside to vouch for you. However, there could easily be other factors as well. Suppose the BIONICLE section of the LEGO Message Boards has more activity than the Atlantis section? If that's the case, then it makes perfect sense for TLG to conclude that there will be more backlash from removing the BIONICLE site than from removing the Atlantis site.

Edited October 30, 2012 by Aanchir