I wish I had some G1 Bionicles. They look really cool, I unfortunately didn’t get into Lego until 2009 and Hero Factory/Bionicle until 2010 with Corroder and XPlode from Hero Factory, in a way I guess it’s like Bionicle 1.5.

@MeisterDad said:
"I have no idea who this guy is or what he did, but this box art and posing is the best I've seen in a long time."
I think that’s a girl

I really wasn’t that impressed with the Toa Metru, but she’s one of the better ones. The translucency of her mask has a really cool look. And I still wish they’d made Matau’s Kanohi Metru in gold so I could make The Rocketeer.

I always loved her part in the Metru Nui ad. She was waterskiing barefoot with the heads of these things in the water pulling her along. Didn't really make sense, but she was the Toa of Water, so you know, didn't need much. It was just a cool thing to see and a unique way to showcase her powers.

I remember Bionicle fans making fun of the fact that her mask could actually fit a Clikits part - so you could combine the two most hated themes by traditionalist AFOLs at the time :D

@Endermen39: I feel better about rewording my post to be less confrontational to you now.

@Atuin: I remember the news item on BZPower point that out. It even made her look like she was wearing lipstick.

I like how prior to becoming a Toa, Nokama was a teacher. Interesting having a hero who is a former educator.

While love "isn't canon" that teacher role also resulted in a (very one sided) same-sex romance story first in LEGO in 2004. Nokama's pupil Vhisola is "hot for teacher" and develops a weird stalker crush on Nokama. Nokama doesn't discover this until she finally becomes a Toa and then has to visit Vhisola's house and finds it full of carvings, notes and other mementos commemorating Nokama.

Bionicle really got to get away with a lot of stuff LEGO wouldn't do elsewhere didn't it?

@TheOtherMike said:
" @Maxbricks14 : *Her* weapons. (And the shaping is very appropriate for someone with water powers.) The blue Bionicle characters (not "Bionicles," just to let you know, @Endermen39 ) were always female, I think 8902 and maybe 8932 were the sole exceptions among canister and pocket money sets."

Please don't forget 8981 was also male story-wise.

I've always loved this set of Nokama. Very stylish mask (always a sucker for translucent/transparent elements), fitting weapons, and the accompanying promo video was the sweetest and most captivating thing up until that point. I was on board to buy this set in no time.

What I find wierd about these Bionicle boxarts is that the parts were bent in places they shouldn't bend, like the torso here. It made them look more posable than they really were.

Just realised we’ve had both Turaga and Toa Nokama now, I think that’s the first to do both. Quick check and I found out we’ve had her Hordika form too, so congrats to her on completing the trifecta!

*Insert joke on Captain Rex and Commander Fox getting 'no kama'

The 2004 toa were great, especially in hindsight. The gears were built in and were now angled, these toa had neck articulation now, and they had knees! And elbows!

But they were more single-colored and now featured the slowly ever-creeping up dark bluish gray. In fact, they were amongst the first sets to feature the new grays!

Nokama here was one of the tallest along with Nuju. You could of course change out the height for the rest, but it was fun that they had different profiles this way as they were otherwise quite the same.

Her mask is also one of the more recognizable ones compared to her turaga form. In this year it was revealed that certain matoran villagers can turn into toa, and in turaga after they fulfill their duty. We saw this happen (in the earlier comments about her being a teacher that was when she was a matoran).
Just compare her mask here with her mask in 8543 Turaga Nokama

@Arnoldos said:
"What I find wierd about these Bionicle boxarts is that the parts were bent in places they shouldn't bend, like the torso here. It made them look more posable than they really were."

It is a constant in the Bionicle theme. They used renders for small sets as box art all the way from 2001, and the early years were full of weird poses like this. It gets better after 2006 when the figures got more posable in the real world, but there are still rendering goofs like clipping parts in those later sets.

@Atuin:
By the time Toa Metru released, Galidor had already fizzled out on the launch pad. If Bionicle was more hated than Galidor, it was only because it was so incredibly successful. A lot of gatekeeping AFOLs expected it to be a one-and-done theme solely because they didn’t feel it was “real LEGO”, and couldn’t open their minds enough to see any potential uses for the parts.

@xboxtravis7992:
Bionicle may have gotten away with a lot of things because they were inferred by the fans, rather than being explicitly defined. One could certainly read that as an unrequited romantic crush, but since no romantic relationships were ever written into the story (that I’m aware of, at least), it could also just be a simple case of hero-worship. How many straight, cis-gendered kids have their rooms covered in posters of athletes, actors, characters, or other famous people who are the same gender as they are? A small percentage of those may actually be closeted, but the majority are just projecting themselves on someone they revere, rather than having a crush on them.

I didn’t see any of this going on during the early years of the theme (rather, it would seem like Ace heaven, where romance isn’t even part of the culture). Then again, I wasn’t reading any of the fanfic, so I have no idea what fan interpretations were like at the time.

@Arnoldos:
Agreed. Good thing they never do anything of the sort with CMF artwork. Or at any point during The LEGO Movie.

@ICAbricks:
The lore may seem overwhelming in hindsight, but during the run of this theme, kids were eagerly waiting for the next tiny nugget to come down the pipeline. They had far more time to discuss each new reveal than they had new reveals to discuss.