Random set of the day: Thok
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 8905 Thok, released in 2006. It's one of 47 Bionicle sets produced that year. It contains 42 pieces, and its retail price was US$8.99/£6.99.
It's owned by 1939 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you might find it for sale at BrickLink or eBay.
40 likes
22 comments on this article
Yeah. Huwbot's totally grown bored with Clikits, and his new obsession is Bionicle. 4 Bionicle sets from 7 days, that's a pretty fair hit rate.
I love that sound.
Piraka Rap intensifies...
@ZordBoy Looks like it.
It says"piraka" but looks like pirana (fish)
Clikits Era: March 18, 2018-December 9, 2019
Bionacle Era: December 2, 2019-?
yo yo piraka
the gang on the loose
I remember getting this guy as a kid, his main color isn't actually white but instead very light grey. It's interesting.
I quote:
(Hook)
Yo, yo, Piraka!
Yo, yo, Piraka!
(Verse 1)
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
(Hook)
Yo, yo, Piraka!
(Verse 2)
The gang on the loose
Nothin' you can do
You can try, but why? You know you're gonna lose
(Hook)
Yo, yo, Piraka!
(Yeah)
(Verse 3)
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
... end quote
Oh man, this is going to be interesting.
I thought this said TikTok and I was very worried.
When Clikits kept cropping up it was odd because there weren't that many Clikits sets. Bionicle ran for nearly ten years, there's a lot of Bionicle for the RSotD to pick up on so its a bit more logical. That said, it funny we get two so close together that are from the same year; Thok and Piruk from a couple days ago being enemies from the same storyline
I see some music reference here, which I don't understand.
Thok's white color is actually a bit darker than the regular white color, which is very interesting...
@Yooha ^^ you’re missing out- Go to YouTube and search for Piraka rap. It’s life changing.
@Yooha said:
"I see some music reference here, which I don't understand."
It’s life-changing.
Ah, Thok 'the drifter'. My first Piraka. I won him from a contest from Jetix at the time. Good times!
Thok was an amazing set. Gone were the overly specific builds of the toa Metru or Hordika. Instead, the figure was now more posable than ever. The gear and rubber band mechanisms were gone. In their place was his weapon that could be switched between two modes, his zamor sphere launcher, his glow-in-the-dark grin and his light up eyes. Although the Piraka were mostly clone builds of each other, to me their designs just worked.
Thok didn't have much individual story significance besides some moments where he backstabbed the other Piraka. One such moment was when he stole the power of Brutaka (who could defeat all the toa Nuva in one blow!) together with Hakkann. This didn't last long though.
It was almost a running gag how often they would turn on each other despite being a 'team'. As a team, he partook in posing as toa heroes to the matoran islanders, only to enslave them with their antidermis. (SPOILERS: it's liquid/gasseous makuta, THE makuta). The Piraka would even defeat the OG toa team, the Toa Nuva. He would provide various obstacles in the race for the Mask of Life, which they wanted to use for their own ends. However, Mata Nui -the great spirit of the matoran universe- was dying and a group of Matoran villagers we knew since the first year would come forward, turning into real toa themselves: the Toa Inika.
The year provided various interesting scuffles between the gang of thugs and the gang of heroes.
If you're curious about the Piraka rap, it was a part of the advertising campaign surrounding the Piraka, and might just be the goofiest thing to ever come out of Bionicle -both generations of it! Sadly, it is non-cannon
View it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1CTPC02n0c
My first Piraka. Pretty cool, though Avak was always my favorite.
Bionicle is officially the new Clikits
The Piraka were so cool and revolutionary at the time of their release! Indeed, gone were the days of gear-controlled functions in the canister figures. It was all about pose ability now, and all the Piraka had knee, elbow, and head articulation in addition to the standard wrist, ankle, shoulder, and hip points. Additionally, each Piraka was huge. They towered over previously-released Toa figures, including the Toa Nuva, their first adversaries in the story.
Thok was, to me, the best looking Piraka, and I had to have him! Somehow, they went on sale early in November 2005, and I got in touch with a BZPower member named Flintsmith (anybody remember him? Or IS him?) who managed to find some. I bought Thok from him and got it after Thanksgiving. I was not disappointed! See my Brickshelf folder for pictures I took of him as part of a "review": http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=157439
I really liked how the teeth could glow in the dark and the eyes (for the first time!) could actually light up at the push of a button on the back of the head. Sadly, the battery is non-replaceable (at least, not without breaking the piece), so my Thok's eyes no longer light up with the burning anger of a thousand suns. In retrospect, the spines and head covering, being one, big rubbery piece, was actually a bit of an annoyance. Hard to repackage the figure in its canister with that thing, and it does limit the range of the joint flexibility to a certain degree.
Of the Piraka, the green one, Zaktan, was the leader. Therefore, Thok was just a background character. Like the others, he had powers in triplicate, not to mention the ones gained from the Zamor sphere launcher (which could possess Matoran and force them to do the Piraka's bidding) and his ice blaster. I think when combining powers with another Piraka, he could actually summon elemental powers (in his case, ice), so that alone would make him a match for Toa. Combined, the Piraka assaulted the Toa Nuva when they arrived at Voya Nui seeking the Mask of Life. However, their sheer power and brutality overcame the heroes, and after stripping them of their Kanohi Nuva masks and weapons, the Piraka imprisoned the Toa Nuva in their fortress, slowing leeching elemental energy from their forms.
The Matoran Resistance (remember Piruk?) later infiltrated the fortress while the Piraka were off racing the new Toa Inika to the Mask of Life and freed the Toa Nuva, restoring their masks and weapons. When the Inika returned with the Piraka in tow, Thok and the others wisely decided to not challenge twelve assembled Toa and Axonn, so they slunk away from the main plotline as the Toa Inika prepared to take a deep dive into the depths in pursuit of the Ignika mask.
Ah, 'the Drifter'. 100% solo, 0% sociable, if I remember correctly?
Unlike others' experiences as mentioned above, Thok was my second Piraka; although he might well have been my first, too, if a small army of Reidaks hadn't shown up in Woolworths a few days before the Piraka's official UK release date. I was so amazed to see them ahead of time that I snatched him up right away.
Thok was my favourite at first, though. Over time, he's yielded that role to Avak; but even so, I agree that he's definitely one of the best-looking. I think my favourite thing about the Piraka, set-wise, were those weapons that had two different functions and could switch between them with just a flick of the set's wrist.
On the other hand, my least-favourite thing? The fact that often the rubber spines got all squashed in the canister, meaning they sometimes didn't sit right on the figures. Still, they were a novel idea, and I respect the design team for trying something different with them ^^
I didn't have Thok specifically, but I did get the box set of him, Vezok, and Reidak, combined to make Irnakk, which had a Thok spine in gold with gold tubing as well. That was the pride of my Bionicle collection as a kid until my cat chewed up all the tubing and the spine.
I read somewhere his change from the usual Ice ('Ko(paka)') color of White to the very rare and unusual Light Stone Grey/Light Bluish Grey (otherwise only seen in a few parts from Knights' Kingdom II and Mindstorms) was done to make his Phosphorescent White teeth to stand out a bit more against the color of his head/skull.
I thought the only time LEGO used rap music in advertising was for M-Tron and Blacktron II.