That driller looks AWESOME!

I don't know my Hero Factory lore at all, but I imagine the goal was just to capture and neutralize the kaiju, but a drill would do more than just neutralize. Maybe it's different for the pods, those are allowed to just be eviscerated.

Really regret not picking up one of those.
Mixing minifigs and constraction in this way was an interesting concept.

Most of the lore for this guy I covered in "Villains Minimodel," who's still on the side bar, but here's some additional context.

Bulk was the heavy weapons guy for Alpha Team who was always armed and armored to the teeth.

This here is a drill used to help the Heroes navigate the underground caves of the Kaiju' nest

If memory serves, bulk is the heavy armor and heavy weapons specialist, so having four missiles and a weaponized industrial mining drill on his person is par for the course

@MCLegoboy said:
"I don't know my Hero Factory lore at all, but I imagine the goal was just to capture and neutralize the kaiju, but a drill would do more than just neutralize. Maybe it's different for the pods, those are allowed to just be eviscerated."

This is actually one of the more controversial aspects of the Invasion from Below episode.

The initial plan of the Heroes was just to "stop the invasion," whatever that may entail, so when they found the nest they dug inside to investigate. When the Heroes met the Queen most of them wanted to combat her, but Breeze instead suggested they negotiate with her.

One of Breeze's powers from the very start was she could talk to animals, so she worked out some terms with the Queen Beast that the Kaiju would all head underground and any trapped miners would be freed if they sealed off the entrances to the cave system and moved all tunneling efforts away from it.

This sounds like a happy and joyous ending right? Well just after that a weapon misfired, enraging the Beasts and damaging the supports of the nest ultimately leading to her and all her babies falling into a pit of acid. The Heroes spent the time heading home congratulating themselves on a job well done and how well they stuck it to those monsters.

This didn't sit well with the HF fanbase. For the first four story arcs Hero Factory had a very strong environmentalist aspect of protecting nature and the Heroes had always been good about treating their badies fairly, ultimately protecting them as much as they protected the city. It was super out of character to have them cheer about genocide after negotiating peace which when combined with a new voice cast and much cheaper animation made it one of the least liked episodes/specials of the show.

I loved the minifigs from this wave. They have such a unique design. I unfortunately only ever picked up Rocka, but maybe one day I'll get around to collecting them all.

I remember the fanbase trying to gaslight themselves into thinking the Invasion From Below episode looked better because it was from Ghost. I never liked that episode, the characterization was basically nonexistent, the art style was messy, and the voice cast was really generic. I know some Bionicle fans wanted the movies to look like long versions of the Advance/Ghost animations, and... well, now we know what that would look like, a half-hour-long Toa Mahri animation, with all of the shallow trappings that entails...

Let's not forget that the previous episodes and the final Bionicle movie were from Threshold Entertainment through Tinseltown Toons... you know, the same guys that brought us FoodFight. Honestly, their work on Bionicle and Hero Factory was pretty decent, even though they made a lot of obvious use of matte paintings for establishing shots and backgrounds rewatching them as an adult.

Anyway, that's fairly off-topic from the set itself. It's not a bad set, but IFB was the line of sets that really made me notice Constraction price inflation. It wasn't that large of a price jump, but it *felt* like they were trying to justify slightly higher prices on glorified standard figures with cockpits instead of heads. Still, the cocoons are nice, and the blue shells for the summer jumpers looked neat even if it's a superfluous change. I just wish the drill could reach farther over the cockpit on this; the set looks best when the drill is folded up against the back in reverse.

The only new Hero minifigures for the summer were Surge and Bulk to my memory; it's a shame we couldn't get Nex and Stringer minifigures to complete the main character set; I assume they already ate up their part budget for a theme's final year to make two more helmets and cast the limbs in their colors.

Those plant pods are instant attention grabber for sure. Perfect piece to create an alien environment. But you'll need more than a few to make it believable.

@Alia_of_AGL said:
"I remember the fanbase trying to gaslight themselves into thinking the Invasion From Below episode looked better because it was from Ghost. I never liked that episode, the characterization was basically nonexistent, the art style was messy, and the voice cast was really generic. I know some Bionicle fans wanted the movies to look like long versions of the Advance/Ghost animations, and... well, now we know what that would look like, a half-hour-long Toa Mahri animation, with all of the shallow trappings that entails...

Let's not forget that the previous episodes and the final Bionicle movie were from Threshold Entertainment through Tinseltown Toons... you know, the same guys that brought us FoodFight. Honestly, their work on Bionicle and Hero Factory was pretty decent, even though they made a lot of obvious use of matte paintings for establishing shots and backgrounds rewatching them as an adult.
"

The Mahri Mini-Movie is the right type of shallow to work for a short film (extended commercial). Not a lot of plot, but every shot looks cool and it hyped people to play with the toys. It's a fine balance between being shallow and awesome vs. being shallow and boring; and it is obvious what worked in a few minutes wouldn't work in a longer format.

My frustration is more a cultural one not specific to Bionicle or Hero Factory. We see a lot of people putting out 5-15 minute long short fanfilms on YouTube for Star Wars or Marvel or D.C. They get praised and always called "so much better than what Disney/Warner Brothers/any other corporate giant has done! They should fire Kathleen Kenneddy/James Gunn/Kevin Feige/ big name producer and make you in charge!" Because, as the Mahri commercial vs. Invasion from Below highlights the ability to make a cool short film doesn't translate to a good 30 minute TV special, or a full series or feature length film.