Huwbot must like Bionicle.

Hi Piruk!...I can imagine adults having a bit of a giggle listening to their offspring mispronounce this guy’s name.

Oh wow, Bionicle certainly did made it to the RSOTD rooster, didn't it. Knowing that there are gazillion Bionicle sets, we are sure to see many more of them...

The Voya Nui Matoran always stand out to me as some of the best of the little sidekick sets. They're all differently designed, you see, not just clones with a few colours or accessories changed (like the Bohrok Va or Av-Matoran). For example Piruk here has one of the same pieces he uses for his feet as his central torso that everything else builds off

I never got Piruk, but yeah, the Voya Nui Matoran were designed in direct complaint to how "cloney" the small sets had been since the days of the 2003 Matoran. It kind of made them look a little mutated to me, but the variety in build experience was worth it. The main downside was some of the Voya Nui Matoran lacked proper heads (I'm looking at you, Kazi!), which baffles me why the set designers allowed that. Then again, 2006 BIONICLE, as awesome as it was, had some really weird changes to set design along with all the good changes.

So, as far as storyline goes, the Matoran had to carry the "hero" side of the story until summer when the Toa Inika were released. They made for intrepid, if not woefully unprepared, adversaries for the monstrous Piraka that had taken over their island. Posing as Toa, it was decidedly cruel reading how they conned the Matoran into enslavement in their search for the Mask of Life. Garan was the leader of the resistance, and I can't actually recall much about Piruk's character anymore after all these years.

Regardless, in the novels, the Toa Nuva arrive, fresh from their relocation to Metru Nui after the events of "Mask of Light", and try to take on the Piraka. They fail miserably, and that leaves Piruk and company as the only ones to do anything about the evil that has taken over their land. However, they observe that you don't have to be a Toa to be a hero...and soon, more Matoran would arrive in search of the missing Toa Nuva and bring those words to life (in a contradictory way, since they end up becoming Toa. Oh well).

Oh, and I guess the Matoran Resistance had Axonn on their side, but he was kept in the story "shadows" because in North America, his set wasn't due to be released until the summer time. Yeah, I remember the years of split European-American release schedules. It always seemed to favor the Europeans, of course. They got the Visorak and all the "titan" sets at the start of 2005, and all we got was the Toa Hordika and Rahaga! And in 2006, we started the year with just the Piraka and the Matoran, while Europe had all that plus Axonn and Brutaka!

OK, nostalgia over! Someone else who has memorized Piruk's page on BS01 can take it from here.

I remember being pretty impressed with the Voya Nui Matoran at the time; some of their builds, granted, were a bit of a stretch - and five out of six of them were built around foot pieces! - but the mutated appearance that Lego_Lord_Mayorca mentions actually worked to their advantage. In canon, after all, these had been normal Matoran at first, but were deemed unable to do their work properly and were sent to Karzahni ( 8940 ) for repairs.

Unfortunately, Karzahni was awful at his job and only succeeded in making weaker the Matoran sent to him, mangling them into forms like Piruk here displays. To compensate, Karzahni gave them weapons and sent them away to the Southern Continent - a part of which would ultimately break away to become Voya Nui, the place where we first met these guys.

It's a shame so many of the small characters from later years never got to do much beyond their initial appearances. After carrying much of the story for the first half of '06, the Voya Nui Resistance fell into the background for the second half, and - aside from a certain revelation about Velika - fell off the map completely after that, so far as I'm aware. It would have been nice to see them again... but I suppose that, by the end, Bionicle had so many characters that it simply wasn't possible to give them all adequate limelight xD

On another note... I will admit that the lack of eyes on any of these Matoran still remains the weirdest thing about them, to me. Most of them have the head pieces... but their eye sockets are just left empty.

*hashtag*Savetheband

"aside from a certain revelation about Velika..."

Ah yes... that revelation. Still not sure about that one, Velika was one of my favorite characters to come out of 2006. I'm currently an engineering major if that explains why characters like Velika and Nuparu stood out as favorites... and then... only to discover Velika wasn't some self made engineer Matoran but actually some elder god in a Matoran body who was planning to go on his own "Pinky and The Brain" quest of world domination was... bizarre.

Anyways as for the small sets go... I think the best waves by far were the original McDonalds toys (all clone sets, but still fun), the Turaga, the 2003 Matoran (if only we got the Le-Matoran and Onu-Matoron that year too...), the 2006 Matoran and the 2007 Matoran-Hyrduka waves. G2's Protectors and Creatures from 2015 and 2016 respectively stand out too; but at $10 a pop and the articulation of a full sized Toa they hardly seem like "small sets" compared to the old $4 bargain bin waves of old. The Av-Matoran, Agorii, Stars, all seemed a bit to repetitive; and the poor Metru Nui Matoron were flat single piece builds with a few limbs sticking out of them.