Bonk bonk bonk bonk booooonk...

Looks like this new invasion is in full swing.

Though there is no Bionicle advent calendar as far as I know of.

Tremble at the sight of my frozen...

frisbee

Uh, yeah, looking back, the "Metruan" of the 2004 winter wave aren't stunners. Those 90-degree angle limbs, the hollow backside, and slightly-wobbling head make them look awkward. Not to mention they are all "clones", in that other than color and mask, they are all built the same and use the same pieces. But at the time, these guys were quite impressive. They towered all Matoran that came before them, looking almost Toa-like in their stature and build. This befitted their origin as the true physical form of the Matoran back when lived in peace and prosperity in Metru Nui, the Great City, a thousand years before the events of the first three years of BIONICLE.

Ehrye here was one of six Matoran implicated as a possible traitor to Metru Nui by spreading the deadly Morbuzahk plant throughout the city (the first of many "placeholder" villains for each year until Lego figured out they could split the hero and villain canister sets per wave). Additionally, Ehrye and the others knew the location of the most powerful Kanoka disks that the Toa Metru would need to destroy the Morbuzahk for good. As it turns out, Ehrye, who had something of a scholarly rivalry with the Matoran-turned-Toa Nuju, was NOT the traitor. But darker things were afoot in the City of Legends, and Ehrye fell the to same fate as the rest of the citizens of Metru Nui: captured and imprisoned by the Dark Hunters, who were working on the behalf of a hidden, sinister master...

(It's Makuta. It always comes back to Makuta in BIONICLE! That guy is everywhere!)

Okay. Now it's starting to get ridiculous.

Despite the criticisms upthread, I have to confess, this was my favourite line of the Bionicle smaller figures. I absolutely loved them. It's about the only Bionicle line where I collected all 6 (even if they all looked the same, with minor differences) without thinking twice about it. I really liked these guys, and there's not many Bionicle subthemes I said that about.

At the time, I appreciated the detective-story question of which Matoran was the traitor. I thought the marbled masks were cool, but ugly, and on the whole I preferred the single-color masks. It was nice to finally get a Matoran with a standard head with eyes, able to stand up straight, but I was never a big fan of the flat single-piece torso. It felt like a cheat, and the head articulation was disappointingly limited compared to the standard set by the Rahkshi and the Toa Metru. The price of only $4 was great back then and it's even better today.

Fifteen years later, I wonder how much the marbled masks in this line contributed to the later development of two-component molds, which are one of the most impressive Lego innovations of this decade.

Those big torso pieces turned out to be surprisingly versatile, while bodies here, armour plating elsewhere, even heads on some builds

I could admire those backgrounds all day.

After years of older AFOLs saying BIONICLE "isn't LEGO", this is definitely a welcome shift.

It's almost a Bionicle advent calendar. Who needs Clikits.

I actually received this as a gift from my wife on the day before our wedding. Jewish tradition is that bride and groom are not to see each other the entire week before the wedding and--knowing that I was into LEGO as a kid (I was in my dark ages at this point)--she bought this and one other set (a micro-scale Star Destroyer) and had them waiting for me where I was staying that week so that I would have something to keep my mind off of how much I missed her.

As much as this set holds sentimental value for me because of when and by whom it was given to me, I do recall being aghast at this being considered LEGO. Aside from using some pins, it did not fit within the System. I actually still feel that Bionicle is one of the most un-LEGO themes that has been produced. I know that people credit it with saving LEGO from bankruptcy, but getting this set actually had the effect of *keeping* me in my dark ages for even longer than I probably would have stayed in them had LEGO rededicated itself to quality sets in the classic quartet of City (nee Town), Space, Castle and Pirates. It was my son's purchase of 7239 (Fire Truck), which came out in the United States just a few years later that finally got me out of my dark ages (or maybe it was the fact that I now had a son with whom to share my hobby).