Random set of the day: Rorzakh
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 8618 Rorzakh, released during 2004. It's one of 56 Bionicle sets produced that year. It contains 32 pieces, and its retail price was US$9 / £5.99, which equates to about US$15 / £11 in today's money.
It's owned by 3,030 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you should find it for sale at Brick Owl, BrickLink, where new ones sell for around $42.50, or eBay.
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21 comments on this article
Hmm... Looks like one of those weird cosplay creatures where the person is hunched over on stilts.
Either that or this thing doesn't know how to stand up in ballet point shoes.
@Miyakan said:
"Hmm... Looks like one of those weird cosplay creatures where the person is hunched over on stilts."
I've seen people make Transformers costumes that actually transform. I mean, it's a very simplistic transformation, like one you'd see in a Transformer aimed at the same kids that 4+ sets are aimed at, but still.
@Miyakan said:
"Hmm... Looks like one of those weird cosplay creatures where the person is hunched over on stilts."
Like the Landstriders from The Dark Crystal?
Only two more of these guys to go before they’ve all been RSotD.
One of my last Bionicle sets I got (mostly because I found them on heavy discount at a local supermarket).
To be fair it's not bad, it just feels like a downgrade compared to both the Rahkshi and the Toa Metru that came before them. The fact that the Vahki were one of the last "clone sets" didn't help either.
I'm also curious that Lego lists the eye/head something piece (and the canister lid too I guess?) as transparent yellow. Context-wise it should match Whenua Metru's Trans-Neon Green? It also looks like it's actually between colors 44 and 49, further distorted by being so non-transparent due to being PP or something.
@PurpleDave said:
" @Miyakan said:
"Hmm... Looks like one of those weird cosplay creatures where the person is hunched over on stilts."
Like the Landstriders from The Dark Crystal?"
I have not seen that movie in a long time. But yes, like one of those. I'm sure they would have been an inspiration for the one I was thinking of.
From a brief search there are a few different versions now and they seem to be called spiritwalker costumes.
ror...
@Atuin said:
"I'm also curious that Lego lists the eye/head something piece (and the canister lid too I guess?) as transparent yellow. Context-wise it should match Whenua Metru's Trans-Neon Green? It also looks like it's actually between colors 44 and 49, further distorted by being so non-transparent due to being PP or something."
Metru Nokama and Bordakh's eye colors differed, too. Bit weird that they couldn't make up their minds there.
@TheOtherMike said:
" @Atuin said:
"I'm also curious that Lego lists the eye/head something piece (and the canister lid too I guess?) as transparent yellow. Context-wise it should match Whenua Metru's Trans-Neon Green? It also looks like it's actually between colors 44 and 49, further distorted by being so non-transparent due to being PP or something."
Metru Nokama and Bordakh's eye colors differed, too. Bit weird that they couldn't make up their minds there."
Yeah, I just noticed that today :D
Although Trans-Neon-Orange and Trans-Bright-Orange were already confusing as heck around the time the later was introduced. I heard it was meant as replacement in 2004, but then they changed their mind only to replace it anyways in what was it - 2022?
Located to the far north, Metru Nui was one of the most technologically advanced yet isolated lands in the Matoran Universe. As outside threats and internal turmoils started to rise, the city decided it would need some sort of defensive force. The Matoran Nuparu was brought on board and after many experiments developed the Vahki, a legion of robotic police enforcers.
While the Vahki were effective in fending off wild animal threats, as time went on their control over the city became more and more strict. In large part to Makuta kidnapping the city's elder, Dume, and impersonating him, the Vahki became increasingly observant, demanding, and hostile towards the city's own people, striking fear in the hearts of those they were meant to protect. Makuta would even stir artificial threats on the island, such as the Morbuzakh, to make the Matoran think they needed more guards and not question stricter curfews.
While searching for the Great Disks the Toa Metru had many minor run ins with the Vahki, often trespassing into forbidden areas and causing confusion when their identities couldn't be verified. When the Toa Metru came close to finding the false Dume's secret, the Toa were labeled traitors to the island and the Vahki were sent out to capture them. Half of the Toa were captured by the forces, and the other half had to evade the full police force as they traveled the island to bust them out of prison.
Eventually Makuta's business in Metru Nui drew to a close, as his grand plan to put the Great Spirit Mata Nui to sleep neared completion. Using his Dume disguise he ordered the entire city's populous to gather in the central Coliseum, and those who hesitated were forced into submission by the Vahki. There they were shoved into special Pods that would wipe the Matoran's memories to help Makuta enslave and control them easier. When the Great Cataclysm arrived and Mata Nui fell, the power grid in Metru Nui overloaded frying most of the Vahki's brains. Those Vahki who survived were picked off by the Visorak spiders who invaded the city in the next month.
Rorzakh were the Vahki enforcers most often stationed in the underground Archives of Onu-Metru. They had a quirk of obsessive diligence compared other models, restlessly perusing a target until either the target exhausted or the Vahki was destroyed, and their recklessness during chases resulted in them destroying themselves far more often than other models. Vahki were all equipped with Stun Staffs that let them invade or alter the minds of targets, intended as a non-lethal way to deal with misbehaving Matoran and discourage physical violence against their charges. Rorakh bore twin Staffs of Presence, which allowed them to see and hear anything a target could without their knowledge, allowing them to turn potential criminals into unwitting spies to uncover illegal operations.
While there was an attempt in the background lore to give the Vahki different personalities, or at the very least different approaches to their authoritarian policing, I'm not sure that was ever really borne out in the story, they were always just very generic mooks designed to give the Toa Metru trouble.
The little animations Lego did to introduce them all were pretty rad though
@Brickalili said:
"While there was an attempt in the background lore to give the Vahki different personalities, or at the very least different approaches to their authoritarian policing, I'm not sure that was ever really borne out in the story, they were always just very generic mooks designed to give the Toa Metru trouble.
The little animations Lego did to introduce them all were pretty rad though"
Reused function from the Rahkshi, plain thighs, reused arms and feet from the Toa Mata including arms with no wrists or elbows. Every head exactly the same shape, Literally mindless robots in the story, with very little plot presence, just a looming background threat.
8617 Zadakh was among my first sets, so I should have nostalgia, and I love their giant transparent heads, but the Vahki were so pointless.
THE CORUPPTED POLICE: LEGO VERSION
That time Bionicle depicted a dystopian police state. These robots (yes, unlike most cases these depict a full robot not a biomechanical character) were the enforcers.
A cool detail is that the blurbs on their quirks usually make sense from a worldbuilding perspective. In this case the sleeper spy agent and diligence make sense because they police the Great Archives, a maze of tunnels and layers upon layers housing dangerous creatures in stasis. It would make sense for them to have countermeasures for 'foes' hiding in there.
Rorzakh was my first Vahki. I liked the transformation function (it can also walk on its legs with the arms like regular arms and with the head turned 180 degrees to look forward in its upright pose), with the four-legged mode depicted here working well.
It also came with a glow in the dark kanoka disk that can be launched out of its mandibles. Its head itself is the launcher.
Using the gear function to swing the arms back and forth, however makes the shoulders clash against the transparant head piece. It's a softer material so that makes the spikes at the sides show wear.
I must say though that although I like the other Vahki too (those are a lot more colorful actually), their designs are very same-y and a downside of their designs is that their staffs all work basically the same way in play, as the gear function and their posing only allow you to stab. No swinging, blocking or anything. Nuurakh and Zadakh (red and green) at least suggest picking up and cutting with scissors.
Oh, and the launchers mean they either have their 'mouths' stuffed with a disk or they don't and lose that pop of color.
Speaking of the disks, in 2004 there were six designs with abstract colored markings, one for each region. But the 'collectible' part are the three digit codes. I never liked those. Of the top of my head they indicated 'power', 'effect' 'strength of power' or something along those lines.
In fact, I looked it up. It was region, power, strength. That's the thing! They are just digits! I didn't know about this until I read about it on fansites! Unlike the universal and mysterious but evocative disks from Slizers/Throwbots or even the disks from the matoran in 2001 Bionicle, these will outwardly only tell you what region they're from. I don't think they make for all that good of a collectible or toy gimmick. It felt lacking in imagination.
By the way, a fun tidbit is that the two combiner models of three Vahki each build upon one of the two modes. One is a six-legged crawler, the other is a hulking humanoid powerhouse. That's fun designwork.
My first Vahki. I'm very nostalgic for these, even though looking back I know the Vahki aren't all that loved. The change from bipedal to quadruped stance on its weapons and toes was somehow fascinating to me. It's kind of strange how much I wanted to collect all of them even though they are more cloney than other cannister waves.
Ended up getting five when they came out and a sixth as an adult. Considering I completed all cannister waves from 2004 onwards, it appeared their clone nature became obvious to child me after a while.
I can never remember which Vahki is which, since they don't have the element-indicative names of the earlier canister villains or the distinct personalities of later ones.
I pieced together a blue one (minus one staff) from a collection handed down to me as a kid, but I already had a couple of Guurahks and the Vahki made so little of an impression on me in the books that I didn't keep it that way for long.
@Atuin said:
"I'm also curious that Lego lists the eye/head something piece (and the canister lid too I guess?) as transparent yellow. Context-wise it should match Whenua Metru's Trans-Neon Green? It also looks like it's actually between colors 44 and 49, further distorted by being so non-transparent due to being PP or something."
Colors can get very messy. You’d think that official colors would always be accurate, but look up design 11010 on OPAB and you’ll see that The One Ring is listed as coming in warm-gold, but if you order it you’ll get a standard gold-chrome version. Officially, gold-chrome was delisted years ago, but The One Ring has never been released in any other color, so their solution was to switch the color listing to something that they did still have on the color chart, and then keep chrome-plating them as usual. Personally, I’d like to see them make it in other colors for a change. Warm-gold would actually be nice, but trans-bright-green or even bright-green would be useful for, I dunno…something I guess.
Then Bricklink uses user-submitted color data, so there are inconsistencies there, like “dark-red” covering at least two official colors (dark-red and new-dark-red). Some of the Bionicle parts (like Vahki eye/brains and Nokama Metru’s kanohi) have slightly off colors, and I don’t know if it’s an actual different color or if it’s the frosted surface, or even a combination of the two. Then there are the silver/gold Metru kanohi, which have wildly different shades of silver and gold than anything else I’ve ever seen in person. But we weren’t able to see what the official names for those colors were back when those parts were still in production, so there’s definitely some hand-waving when it comes to figuring out what color names to list them under.
Oh look, the near enough to Blacktron 2 Vahki. My first Vahki, but not because of the Blacktron 2ishness, but because I collected the black Bionicles.
@ElephantKnight said:
"Oh look, the near enough to Blacktron 2 Vahki. My first Vahki, but not because of the Blacktron 2ishness, but because I collected the black Bionicles."
Despite not technically being a black Bionicle, 8912 is the most Blacktron-looking one I can think of, albeit I and not II.
@Binnekamp said:
"I must say though that although I like the other Vahki too (those are a lot more colorful actually), their designs are very same-y and a downside of their designs is that their staffs all work basically the same way in play ... Speaking of the disks, in 2004 there were six designs with abstract colored markings, one for each region. But the 'collectible' part are the three digit codes. I never liked those. Of the top of my head they indicated 'power', 'effect' 'strength of power' or something along those lines.
In fact, I looked it up. It was region, power, strength. That's the thing! They are just digits! "
I liked the novelty of the new setting and the articulation of the Toa Metru canister sets, but 2004 was the beginning of the end of Bionicle for me. The numbered disks were just so much less interesting as collectibles than the krana, which were less much less interesting than the Kanohi. For teenage me, it felt like Lego wasn't even trying with the collectibles anymore ... and they weren't, really. The Kanoka disks were glorified ammo packs, and starting in 2005 that slot in the product line was just filled with ammo packs anyway. With the Vahki, I felt like it was the first time that Bionicle was blatantly reusing parts and play features, and they seemed like just rehashed Rahkshi to me: the feet and arms were reused from the Toa Mata, the lower torso from the Rahkshi, and the upper torso from the 2003 Matoran. Of course, it wasn't really the first time Bionicle had released rehashes as canister sets, but the rehashed natures of the Toa Nuva and the Bohrok Kal were justified in the story while the rehashed nature of the Vahki wasn't. As an adult, I can appreciate that reuse of parts and play features in Bionicle is in fact a key part of its existence as real, genuine Lego and a beloved building system for many, but as a kid I thought it was a cheap cash grab.
@iwybs:
Star Wars debuted two years before Bionicle, but when I ran the numbers sometime around 2002, both themes had accounted for a full 100 new molds. But where several of the early SW-original molds still frequently appear outside of the SW theme, that didn’t work out so well for Bionicle. And the theme itself was quick to abandon them. I think the voodoo ball is the only Mata-era element that stuck around much after the Nuva wave, and the Bohrok eye was about the only part from those that outlasted the Bohrok Kal. They made an honest effort to find other uses for the Mata/Turaga tools, but being strictly limited to Technic connections kinda worked against that, since I don’t think anything except maybe the Bohrok eye has ever appeared in a traditional Technic set. Mostly I remember them being used in various Racers sets, outside of other Bionicle sets. And the Toa Mata torso, of course, actually debuted in the Technic Stormtrooper, 8008. So, the fact that they eventually started trying to recycle parts from older waves into completely unrelated designs may have been a mixed bag, in terms of success, but it was obviously done with the best intentions, given how the theme was burning through new molds like there was no tomorrow. It’s just unfortunate that, as they became more successful in that regard, the theme started bleeding off fans. Whether the two were directly related, I don’t know. Part of why I dropped out was because I actually didn’t like the shift from the Toa Mata frame and color scheme to the Toa Merru ones. And I really hated the introduction of the CCBS parts.