I can see how that's a stronghold. I certainly wouldn't want to attack that!

It's insane that a set would come with every major character from a story. That rarely happened back then, and it almost certainly never happens today. There's been a few instances where all the ninja from Ninjago appeared together in one set, but you almost never get the complete lineup of characters without just buying every set in any other theme.

Yo, yo, Piraka!
Yo, yo, Piraka!
The gang on the loose
Nothin' you can do
The Beast on the move
Bully comin' through
Trigger, Tracer, Drifter comin' too
Add The Snake that makes Piraka crew
Yo, yo, Piraka!
The gang on the loose
Nothin' you can do
You can try, but why? You know you're gonna lose
Yo, yo, Piraka!
(Yeah)
Piraka on the street
It's time, tick tocka
The gang on the loose in your school locker
At your home too, in your friend's room
Nothing you can do, the gang is on the loose
Yo, yo, Piraka!
Yo, I rap to the beat
The gang is on the loose
Piraka in the street, that's a lot of heat
The Trigger
Tracer
Drifter
The Snake
The Beast
The Bully
All that makes Piraka
(Ungh)
Yo, yo, Piraka!
Piraka, go Piraka
Piraka, go Piraka
Piraka, go Piraka
Miraka, go Piraka
'Ey yo, go Piraka
Let's go, go Piraka
'Ey yo, go Piraka
Go Piraka, go Piraka
Let's go, go Piraka
'Ey yo, go Piraka

I bought that giant mask off Bricklink

really dont know why I did so, just sits there awkwardly

Set reminds me of that scene out of Deadpool/Wolverine: "Huh. Paul Rudd finally aged.":)

@MCLegoboy:
Yeah, the initial wave of The Hobbit sets got you exactly one of each of the Company of Dwarves, and I think Bilbo might have been the only character who had any repeats before the second full wave was produced. LotR was similar, except that Frodo was the common character.

@Worrissey:
Without the GitD dino tails representing teeth, it probably looks a bit Muppety, huh?

Great Ball Contraption.

I'm wanna keep things short tonight but we'll see how that goes. Funny we got another playset so soon.

The Piraka were a band of Skakdi thugs (identifiable by their head spines) who worked for the Dark Hunters (basically the BIONICLE mafia.) Eventually, the six of them decided to break off on their own. They raided the lair of the rumored dead Makuta Teridax, only for the Makuta to be not-so-dead. Makuta used his mind powers to influence the Piraka, convincing them to travel to the far off land of Voya Nui to claim the Legendary Mask of Life.

Makuta secretly tagged along, in his Antidermis form. Once on the island, the Piraka convinced the Matoran living there they were Toa, and got them to build a stronghold in their honor. A vat was used to house Makuta's Antidermis*, but only the leader Zaktan knew the substance's true identity and would spend hours locked in, "talking to it." Eventually, when the Piraka's true colors began to show, they used the Antidermis to mind control as many Matoran as possible. Only six managed to escape, becoming known as the Voya Nui Resistance Team.

Eventually the Toa Nuva arrived on the island, and they were defeated and imprisoned by the Piraka in the Stronghold. The Toa Inika followed to rescue them. Over a series of battles the Toa Inika used Protodermis to free all the Matoran of their mind control, the Inika and Resistance Team managed to free the Toa Nuva, and in a duel with his friend-turned-enemy Brutaka, Axon managed to destroy the vat containing Makuta's Antidermis. If memory serves, Tahtorak shenanigans also left a giant hole in the side of the structure.

I can't remember if ever happened in the canon or not, but the commercial for this set suggested Thok used his "bring things to life" power to bring the entire fortress to life... which is pretty epic. While totally non-canon, I love this place's depiction in the game BIONICLE Heroes. It's metal (metaphorically, structurally, and musically.) I'm a sucker for thunder storming atmosphere! Personally I headcanon the playset to be the "front door," the online animations to be the "central chamber" and BIONICLE Heroes to be the "back door."

I also had this set as a kid and its surprisingly awesome. They've got a light up brick as a laser gun and this rail-system thing that lets you move zamors between the towers. It's very juniorized, but also absolutely massive for the price with ALL TWELVE major characters from that story year, which to this day is still insane!

*This also means this technically includes another version of Makuta. You may even say a Makuta "Minifigure." Unfortunately, it doesn't look nearly as cool as in the comics.

@GSR_MataNui:

Don't forget one of the Voya Nui Resistance Team matoran was also one of the Great Beings in disguise.

hey piraka stronghold, are you alive?

I only came to read the Piraka rap, and I'm not disappointed.

Can’t imagine the Piraka themselves were so keen on Brutaka they’d hang a giant sized version of his mask on their wall, which implies Brutaka did it himself possibly as some sort of reminder of how much they owed him. Even when he turned back into a good guy he could be a little on the petty side, I think that tracks

2006 was probably my favorite year for Bionicle. Seeing this makes me want to play Bionicle Heroes again.

This was my Christmas present in 2006. So so many hours spent playing with this.

I got it back in rhe day as a gift. It's perhaps the best location-based set from Bionicle.

The while thing is built as a piraka head and spine, and there's a plethora of play features including plenty of doors, zamor launchers, a laser/searchlight with a light brick and an actual ball chute system that transports zamors from the antidermis vat chamber in the middle to the launcher on the next tower. And there's lots of siege equipment.

And it includes every single Toa Inika AND Piraka. And the headsculpts are actually accurate unlike the 2007 wave. Those spines are still in use today!

Moreover... the whole building can be played as being a living thing. The gate is seperate and due to the hinges you can snake the towers and head section next to each other because the spines use click hinges at the ends. And the mouth still opens and closes! I still find that quite cool, as now you can double the fortress as a beast that might be able to move on rocks on top of lava.
None of that is canon of course, although the fortress itself is. It was built by enslaved matoran islanders to solidify the Piraka's reign over them.

Noticeable is that this set uses three large parts; the rocks and head. As I've since re-acquired one and now often gave to store it disassembled due to space, I can say that even though I have to store those large parts elsewhere for efficiency, the rest of the parts are still surprisingly numerous. The set is surprisingly substantial!

Finally, this set contains some interesting recolors of parts. The most interesting one is the viking horn/tooth in pearl light gray. There's lots of them here and they are still the hard plastic version, as this is before 2010's Atlantis theme. The GOTD dino tails are great for teeth (and consistent with the GOTD teeth of Piraka sets) and the pearl light gray dino tails are great too.
Oh, and this is the only set outside of maybe the Toa Terrain Ceawler that has enough figs to use all 12 weapons from the weapon bag seen in 2006 and 2007 playsets. All other sets have a pile left over.

@MCLegoboy said:
"It's insane that a set would come with every major character from a story. That rarely happened back then, and it almost certainly never happens today. There's been a few instances where all the ninja from Ninjago appeared together in one set, but you almost never get the complete lineup of characters without just buying every set in any other theme."

Almost certainly because of the action figures being the main part of Bionicle. The "minifig scale" sets were an experiment, and with so few of them there was no reason to cheap out on the character selection.

I think if these smaller scale Bionicle playsets were more successful, it could have fully shifted to minifigure scale like Minecraft and had a longer lifespan after the constraction figure parts were axed. Though it would definitely alienate some fans.