Thought it said Umbara for a second, and I thought, we don't see that on Umbara in The Clone Wars.

2006 was Bionicle's edgiest year, and if we're just looking at design, Umbra is not the most edgy, but he's got some misplaced anger going on, even with the roller blades.

Probably the single most forgettable Titan set in Bionicle; a retailer exclusive, a gratuitously recycled mask that doesn't fit the rest of the design (not even recolored to fit the palette), with slapped together random rollerblades and a messy weapon. I'd say he's just cobbled together from surplus parts due to the random Rhotuka launcher and thrice-used mask, and that's probably true to some extent, but they still used a good amount of new-for-2006 Piraka and Inika parts, including the light-up weapons. Maybe they wanted to have a Darth Maul wannabe be their retailer exclusive set or maybe they were out of ideas. Probably rushed to market, resulting in the "just an unmodified word" name that was probably easy to clear with legal.

I forget this guy existed. Compared to Axonn, Brutaka or Vezon; Umbra is the "he's just... there" character. Basically Umbra is a door guard on roller blades, and once the heroes pass his watch by defeating him with mirrored glass his role in the story ends as quickly as it began.

I still wanted him as a kid. Never got him, and I don't think my collection is lacking to much without it, but I have some nostalgia for him.

@WolfpackBricksStudios said:
"Let me guess: one of the two-hundred-something Toa?"
I still don't understand why you bother coming into these comment sections when you clearly have zero interest in Bionicle, but if it makes you feel any better, this guy actually does seem to be a "literally who" character, if we're to go by some of the comments here. I certainly don't know who he is at least, and I don't think that this design looks particularly appealing or memorable either.

Alright we got a weird one here, strap in folks!

100,000 years ago The Great Beings created the Kanohi Ignika, the Mask of Life, as an emergency failsafe device. If Mata Nui were to ever fall ill, a person could use the mask to siphon their life-force into him and revive him, and if the Universe were to ever become unstable it would wipe out all life within it.

But the Mask itself proved dangerous. It would curse any being who touched it that it deemed unworthy, so the Great Beings decided to seal it away. In the Nui Caves between the lands of Voya Nui and Karda Nui they dug a staircase of 777 steps and filled it with traps and guardians to test the worthiness of anyone who tried to take it.

The final of these obstacles was Umbra. He was an interesting sort, a being made of pure light and with no inner shadow. Thanks to his light based body he is capable of traveling at the speed of light, turning himself into a laser like blast, or both. He is focused and unwavering on any task he is given, cold and calculating, to the point it's unclear if the Great Awakening even affected him. Any who wish to claim the mask must fight and defeat him, regardless of their intention, and his immense speed, size, and strength make it so few survive.

When the Toa Inika came seeking the mask they were forced to fight Umbra. Matoro managed to best the titan, using his Elemental Power over Ice to create surfaces Umbra would loose his fast footing on and mirrors to bounce and reflect his light body until he was unconscious.

Umbra wears a Kanohi Ruru, a Mask of Night Vision, but is unable of accessing its power. A non-canon Walmart description claimed he wore the Kanohi Naynu, The Mask of Lasers, but neither this name nor power were approved by the story team. He wears a pair of roller skates to assist in reaching his insane speeds and wields a double bladed Laser Lance (which as you may assume, shoots lasers.) His Rhotuka Power is the ability to create structures out of solid light where the disk lands.

Umbra is a fascinating BIONICLE character for a variety of reasons. From an out of Universe perspective he's so oddly... irrelevant. Most BIONICLE characters to get set appearances either play a notable role for that year's story, or get expanded backstory and additional appearances in future media. Umbra appears in one (maybe two?) chapters of a book, a comic adaptation of that book, and is offhandedly mentioned during a story serial. Aside from Generation 2 and some of the Combiner Models, he might be the least utilized BIONICLE toy ever.

Umbra's name is also interesting. In both real-life English and in-universe Matoran "Umbra" means "the darkest part of a shadow." This name was chosen by the Great Beings as a way to confuse or deter intruders, they would expect a shadow elemental threat only to be met with a light one.

It's also unclear what exactly Umbra is, if he is a Unique Being or a member of a Sapient Species. We don't see anyone else like Umbra in the series elsewhere, but every other Unique Being built directly by the Great Beings is "god-like" to some degree. They either have an immense amount of power (like Mata Nui and Tren Krom) rule over an entire major bodily function of the MU (like the Bahrag) or both (like Artakha and Karzahni.) Despite his strength, in the grand scheme of things Umbra is not island-shatteringly powerful, he rules over no dominion or land, and has no mythic status among the Matoran. (Hell, I'd even argue the Bahrag are more powerful than him and even they are leagues behind Karzahni.)

And then there's the color scheme. Yellow and dark green with a black mask? It's freakin' weird! No other BIONICLE has quite such a, lets be frank, bad color scheme. The yellow I get, he's made of light. The black I get, "darkest part of a shadow." But dark green doesn't really meld with those other two colors, and thematically has nothing to do with his origin.

I suppose one thing that's cool about him is his toy comes with the light up eyes from that year's Piraka line and TWO of the light up swords from t

I suppose one thing that's cool about him is his toy comes with the light up eyes from that year's Piraka line and TWO of the light up swords from that year's Inika line. He has more light elements than the multiple releases of the literal Toa of Light. That's kinda neat, all he's missing are some glow-in-the-dark parts.

Gripes about the character's slapped together design and story irrelevancy as a one-chapter miniboss aside, it's not a *bad* set per se, I'd be hard-pressed to call any of the 2006 Bionicle product line subpar toys, and on a purely superficial level it's nice to give a character two of the light up weapons (also helps increase the available stock of those parts on the market, though only just for those specific two... one of which happens to be an axe, which is a weird decision for a spear... focus). My copy has long succumbed to the part bin, but I seem to remember the wheel feet to be a little unwieldy at times. Given that the benefit of the 2006 design philosophy was that forgoing mechanical action allowed for the figures to hold poses better than ever before, giving a deluxe set slippery feet was certainly... a choice.

@WolfpackBricksStudios said:
"Let me guess: one of the two-hundred-something Toa?"

No, Umbra is not a Toa.

By my count there are 43* named Toa (current or former) in Generation 1 of BIONICLE, and even then 4* of those are just code names.

At the height of their power the Toa had nearly 3,000 members. Through the Great Cataclysm, the Dark Times, and ensuing purges their numbers fell drastically. There are only about 40 Toa alive by the end of the story, and only 26 of those are identified for the audience.

*I'm counting Prototype as 2 people here, and not counting other fusions/Kaita as their components are already accounted for. I'm only counting Toa as species, not an honorific, which I think would add about 3 to the count. There's only 1 Toa in Generation 2 who was not in Gen 1.

Would have been nice if they could have given him a different mask, or at least recolored that Ruru. Of course, recoloring the ones that came with the Voya Nui Matoran would have been even nicer.

Am I wrong in believing that this was the one Bionicle store exclusive (excluding combiner model sets) that didn’t give us ANY parts in new colors?

EDIT: Well, to answer my own question, Mazeka was another one that gave us no new parts.

I'm getting serious TMNT villain vibes, for some reason. Can't quite rest my foot on it, though...

@Alia_of_AGL:
Umbra is an actual word. If you're watching a solar eclipse, the umbra is the part of the shadow where the moon fully blocks your view of the sun. Penumbra is where you see it partially in shadow. And anteumbra is when you're far enough away that the moon appears smaller than the sun, and fits entirely within the disc of the sun (known as an annular, or "ring of fire" eclipse).

only true Bionicle-heads will understand the absolute weight this set carries on its shoulders; it single handedly canonized wheels after six years of lore