POHATU!!!

Lego with Personality... about dang time!

Seems to me like the past few years of lego products have been lacking in a certain ammount of personality & soul. They appear to have been trying to appeal to differnet markets & have muddled thier space theme with Star Wars Life on Mars & the Insectoid line. Some of teh Star Wars stuff is definitely cool, but all thier products seem to be gearing more and more for little kids. less inricate construction, bigger more useless blocks. Thier Technic line is supposedly for the more advanced builders yet even it has had problmes with the Robo things. worst of all to me was the appaent push towards making action hero type sets with ResQ and Alpha Team and don't even get me started on Jack stone... Seems like Lego kept trying to but failing to create an action figure with any soul.

Untill Bionicle.
I was very skeptical even looking at them in the store I though - nope that's stupid. Then I got a Kopaka and built it and thought hey that's kind of neat and some of the new parts are nifty... Then got to examining the packaging which is cool.And while I could do with out the "gotta collect all the differnet masks" current that underlies the theme , I think lego has just about finally put the peices together to make an apealing action figure. The backstory helps but that appears almost entirely online. Not a problme for me and I suppose most kids nowdays have computers but... well I think that's the only hitch in the Bionicle formula. Although on second thought most of teh products overtjhe past year or two have featured cartoon strips showing some storyline & how to rebuild the sets... Bionicle doens't have a cartoon in the instructions and really no explanation of what it is. it could be frigging anythhing and maybe that's part of why it's cool...

So a fter hitting the website & scoping some parts on the figures I decided I'd venture forth & get me a couple more. Ouna looks the most intimidating and maybe the coolest, but my favorite is definitely Pohatu. Pohatu has some funky charachter that sets him apart. I dunno what it is, but he makes a really neat toy. The last lego toy I got that was as all pleasing as Pohatu was a tiny Insectoid set that was great for having so few pieces. And didn't have a cartoon... maybe I'm onto sometihng there... maybe not :)

Actually as dingy as they maty seem even the Turaga are cool... ok cute... well...
And some of the Makuta look great too...

Actually the Nui Rama are at least as great as Pohatu - thier big bug eyes and big arms make for some dang funy poses. After putting them together i played and made funny noises with them for over an hour and the joy still hasn't worn off, as the Orange one now sits on my monitor. The Nui Jaga are also really cool, but in a tougher sort of way - the trigger activated scorpion like tail has enough power to mangle empty pop cans... gotta like that ;)

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