Random set of the day: Pohatu Nuva
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 8568 Pohatu Nuva, released in 2002. It's one of 28 Bionicle sets produced that year. It contains 40 pieces, and its retail price was US$8/£4.99.
It's owned by 3566 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you might find it for sale at BrickLink or eBay.
Help me come to life! If you like the set I've chosen for you today, please pledge your support for me on LEGO Ideas so I have a chance of becoming an official LEGO set!
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37 comments on this article
"Bionicle. The new Clikits."
Protodermis is one heck of a drug...
I got all of these guys except for Tahu. I wish i could find him for a reasonable price somewhere
This is a very awkward box image.
Ah, Pohatu Nuva. The guy whose weapons can be combined to form a soccer ball...made of four widely spaced blades.
^ Is THAT what it was? I could never figure out what the heck that was supposed to be.
@iwybs said:
"^ Is THAT what it was? I could never figure out what the heck that was supposed to be."
Yeah, I think Potato Nuva's soccer ball blade thing was a reference to the boulder the original Potato came with the year before.
We all love brown reverse torso man. Cool dude.
@SolidState said:
"We all love brown reverse torso man. Cool dude."
T h i c c
In all seriousness though the Toa Nuva were an interesting step for Bionicle. Its clear that most of the sets re-used the base build of the Toa Mata from the year prior with some additional molds to give them a different look with the combined silver armor and tools, and new masks. The Nuva masks are generally regarded as some of the worst looking masks of the franchise now by many fans, although personally I think the Kakama Nuva is one of the better looking ones from that wave.
But the limbs were premolded and static in the Nuva like the other Bionicle sets of the era, and we wouldn't get a Toa with elbow and knee articulation until 2004's Toa Metru wave (which was also a visual reboot for the line switching to darker colors and the new blue gray colors that released that year).
Another feature was the dual functionality of the tools, most of them transforming into forms of transport for the Toa (a lava board for Tahu, glider wings for Lewa, flippers and fins for Gali, ski's for Kopaka and tracked vehicle things for Onua) but Pohatu's is probably the weakest... going from climbing claws to ummm, a hollow soccer ball? It wasn't a form of transport like the other Toa, but I guess when you wear "the great mask of speed" like Pohatu you really aren't looking for easy transport either. The ball was hard to play with though, the 2001 set's boulder was easy to kick with Pohatu's gear functions, but the 2002 being hollow was mostly empty air and it was easier to miss it completely and waste time trying to line up a kick just right to get the ball to move anywhere.
Honestly the best feature of the Toa Nuva was one I only fully appreciated as an adult... each set includes the extra axles and gears to either give each Toa a one arm function with a gear lock to allow easier static posing, or a two arm (but frictionless) function. Its only a few pieces more than what came with the Toa Mata, but its such a simple quality of life improvement for these sets over the originals. But despite that I think its a fair criticism that the last wave of 2002 and the first of 2003 (Bohrok-Kal) were Bionicle repeating "more of the same" and the line was repeating itself, at least until the last 2003 wave and the 2004 soft-reboot changed up the theme into something more unique and fresh again.
Ah Pohatu, just seeing him warms my heart. Lore time!
Pohatu was the Toa Mata/Nuva of Stone, and was best known as the heart of the team. He was easy going, friendly, and bombastic, almost to a fault. He tried to make friends with everyone he met, even if they were his mortal enemies or wanted nothing to do with him, and always saw the good in people around him.
He was probably most notable for his friendship with Kopaka, the Toa of Ice. Kopaka was aloof, reclusive, and easily annoyed by those around him and preferred to work alone, making him practically the opposite of Pohatu. Ironically, these two Toa met each other first. At first Kopaka saw Pohatu as a burden as the two journeyed together to find the other four Toa. After saving each other's lives a few times and really studying him, however, Kopaka learned Pohatu truly loved and cared about him, and was the one person who would never judge or turn on him. Someone to trust.
Their bond went so deep that one of the few times Kopaka showed proper emotion during the series was collapsing to tears when he thought Pohatu had died during a mission. As you can imagine, Finding out Pohatu was alive was also the only time Kopaka showed physical affection, with a massive hug. One of the mainly plotlines left unfished in the BIONICLE epilogues was what was going to happen between Pohatu and Kopaka at the end of the series. Kopaka wanted to settle down, become a Turaga, and find some place to relax and meditate, but Pohatu wanted to stay a Toa and go on adventures protecting the world once more. The two didn't want to part ways, but their paths were clearly diverging. Greg Farsthey stopped writing BIONICLE stories in 2013, and so what choices they made are unknown.
Unlike all the other Toa, Pohatu did not carry a weapon, and while he would engage in fisticuffs he considered himself a pacifist. Even when turned Nuva he only adopted a pair of climbing claws to let him scale and traverse the land with ease. He wore the Kanohi Kakama, Great Mask of Speed, which let him move in the blink of an eye, and he had enough natural strength to hurl massive boulders across the entire island.
This set specifically depicts Pohatu in his Nuva form. After a fight with the Bahrag (Bohrok Queens) the Toa Mata were thrown into a vat of Energized Protodermis, a powerful mutagen, and transformed into more powerful forms. As Nuva, the Toa had the ability to share their mask powers with those around them, letting Pohatu speed up his entire team to get them to the action.
Pohatu was the glue that kept the Toa together. He could diffuse any tensions and bring peace and unity to his allies no matter what. he was the rock and foundation on which they stood as a force of good in an apocalyptic universe.
And then the Gen 2 reboot ruined him by replacing him with some Australian jerkwad that was always picking fights with everybody.
Whereas my original Pohatu had to be returned to the store on account of missing pieces, my Pohatu Nuva came into my possession very cheaply in 2002 due to luck. Some kind of water damage affected a few boxes of Pohatu and Onua Nuvas freshly shipped to Walmart, and these damaged sets were immediately sent to an outlet store and sold at deep discount. I was gifted both Pohatu Nuva and Onua Nuva from this incident, and while Pohatu Nuva was one of the lucky canisters that was actually not affected by the water damage at all, the same could not be said for the dirt-laced, smelly Onua Nuva set. Thankfully, I already had a Onua Nuva.
Pohatu Nuva was both an improvement and a disappointment to me. Compared to his original, 2001 version, the set was more robust. No longer did the head jiggle about--it was firmly connected by one Technic axle/peg arm to the torso piece. And of course, the new Kanohi mask, protodermic armor, and Kodan climbing claws (that yes, formed the protodermic "ball") looked sweet and gave the spindly Pohatu a more muscular, powerful appearance. But LEGO didn't go far enough. In spite of receiving this massive transformation in the BIONICLE story thanks to energized protodermis (the "seal of success", if one is to believe the enigmatic messages in the back of the summer 2002 set instructions), Pohatu Nuva still had the inverted torso of his original form. This meant he was again incompatible with the recently-released 8557 Exo-Toa suit of armor. This was a huge bummer at the time, since you'd think LEGO would make all the new Toa figures compatible with the sweet silver exosuit released just a couple of months prior. LEGO, as it turned out, was wiser than I, for as the story of the Toa Nuva began, it became apparent they were not destined to wear the mighty armor again. Nor did they need to!
You see, the reason for Pohatu's new appearance in this set was due to a titanic battle he and the other Toa waged underneath the island of Mata Nui against the queens of the Bohrok swarms, Cahdok and Gahdok. The Toa had collected Krana from defeated Bohrok, and once inside their lair, discovered a mysterious chambeWhereas the first Pohatu I had to return and buy again because it was a rare case of the set missing a piece, the Nuva version of the Toa of Stone came into my possession due to the "luck" of a few shipment boxes of Pohatu Nuvas and Onua Nuvas being water-damaged and sent to an outlet store to be sold on steep discount. The water damage did not equally pervade every canister in the boxes, so some, like the Pohatu Nuva I received, was practically as clean and new as any one sold at Walmart or Target. The Onua Nuva I received, however, was smelly and the instruction booklet and comic book inside had dried together in a crusty, pasty mess. Thankfully, I already had another Onua Nuva at that point. r with locks that used the Krana as keys. When unlocked, the chamber opened six massive doors, each containing an Exo-Toa. These venerable pieces of technology were ancient, built long ago as yet another type of servant to the Brotherhood of Makuta. They could be autonomous or merely armor for a Toa to wear. In this mode, Pohatu and his brothers and sister donned the suits. They were attacked by Cahdok and Gahdok, and though the suits gave the Toa tremendous strength and advanced weaponry, they hindered the use of their elemental powers and were not effective against the symbiotic shielding the Bahrag (the Bohrok queens proper designation) had when close to one another. Shedding the armor, the Toa decided to pull a "Ghostbusters" and cross the streams of their own elemental powers to create a cage of solid protodermis to trap the monstrous queens. [continued in next post]
This triggered a massive release of energy and opened up portals to pools of energized protodermis. In most cases, energized protodermis would kill a living thing. But you see, the Toa had destiny on their side. If you haven't figured out by now (and sure, it wasn't obvious in 2002), Destiny with a capital "D" is one of those core BIONICLE virtues. If you have a particular Destiny, everything will fall into place to reach it. The Toa were destined to one day fight the ultimate battles to awaken and save Mata Nui. So, instead of killing them, the energized protodermis transformed and enhanced the six heroes of Mata Nui. No more would they be ordinary Toa. Now, and forevermore, they were...
TOA NUVA!
And nothing in BIONICLE would ever be the same! But with great power came great pride, and even friendly Toa like Pohatu would be drawn into conflict with each other even as new threats to Mata Nui loomed on the horizon...
@xboxtravis7992 :
Hey, if it weren't for the Hau Nuva, I never would have been inspired to create all of my Bionicle Star Wars characters...or the TMNT characters that followed. Granted, the only other Nuva masks that I found uses for were a few instances of the Kaukau Nuva and one Miru Nuva.
I hated the Nuva limb, though. It was a hollow shell, where the Toa leg had some solid structure to it. I did put the torso and shoulder armor to use a few times, but I don't think I ever used them together. Also, I came up with a simple trick that allowed you to lock any Toa shoulder gear, which was to slip a 2 axle into the axle holes at the front of the shoulder (roughly where the collarbone would be on a human).
Kopaka Nuva's weapons may have served as skis in the stories, but they were shaped more like skates. They may have worked like toboggan skids, but unless you have a fairly solid crust of ice, those would sink into soft snow if a moderate amount of weight was placed upon them.
@Lego_Lord_Mayorca:
Hey, all of the original Toa were incompatible with the Exo-Toa with the lone exception of Tahu. Either you had to rebuild the Toa to match Tahu's construction, or you had to do what I did and tweak the Exo-Toa to fit the unique physiology of each Toa. I have no idea what box they're in anymore, but somewhere I have a set of six Exo-Toa, of which five are modified so that all six original Toa have their own load-lifter to wear. By the time I got done with that project, I stopped even opening the instruction book because I could just look at one of the other completed Exo-Toa and quickly build the next one in roughly the same order of steps (in fact, because I wasn't relying on the book anymore, I was faster on the last one than I was on the first).
Wow, looooong comments... Considering I've got nothing to say about this set.
Huwbot, why?
I think I’m all lore’d out at the moment. I need a break from b’onkle.
Ah, Pohatu Nuva, chubbiest of the Nuva. Didn't quite have the charm of the original set, IMO. Claws were cool tho.
@BrickHelix said:
"I got all of these guys except for Tahu. I wish i could find him for a reasonable price somewhere"
Starting at 7$ and up on BrickLink.
10$ on eBay
You must not have looked very hard!
@CarolinaOnMyMind said:
"Huwbot, why?
I think I’m all lore’d out at the moment. I need a break from b’onkle. "
You do realize we haven't had a Bionicle set on RSotD in almost a month, right? I consider that a pretty decently long break.
@PurpleDave said:
"
@Lego_Lord_Mayorca:
Hey, all of the original Toa were incompatible with the Exo-Toa with the lone exception of Tahu. Either you had to rebuild the Toa to match Tahu's construction, or you had to do what I did and tweak the Exo-Toa to fit the unique physiology of each Toa. I have no idea what box they're in anymore, but somewhere I have a set of six Exo-Toa, of which five are modified so that all six original Toa have their own load-lifter to wear. By the time I got done with that project, I stopped even opening the instruction book because I could just look at one of the other completed Exo-Toa and quickly build the next one in roughly the same order of steps (in fact, because I wasn't relying on the book anymore, I was faster on the last one than I was on the first)."
That's pretty cool that you were able to get 6 Exo-Toa back then and customize them for each Toa. That was like my dream (still is, sometimes when I look at my stored BIONICLE collection). That said, having only one Exo-Toa, I was able to insert three out of the original six into the suit without modification. Those are Tahu, Lewa, and Kopaka. All three were the same height and had the same leg and chest configuration, so they slipped inside easy. Gali was possible as well, but I felt more comfortable doing it after removing the blue socket joint from her chest. Onua requires serious modification if you want to get him inside the Exo-Toa. And Pohatu? Forget about it!
I don't personally have pictures, but Kelly McKiernan at Kanohi-Power (it was May 2002!) shared some in this article: http://www.bzpower.info/story.php?ID=336
@LegoDavid said:
" @CarolinaOnMyMind said:
"Huwbot, why?
I think I’m all lore’d out at the moment. I need a break from b’onkle. "
You do realize we haven't had a Bionicle set on RSotD in almost a month, right? I consider that a pretty decently long break.
"
Actually, it's been precisely one week!
@PurpleDave
"Kopaka Nuva's weapons may have served as skis in the stories, but they were shaped more like skates. They may have worked like toboggan skids, but unless you have a fairly solid crust of ice, those would sink into soft snow if a moderate amount of weight was placed upon them."
I mean, he is the Toa of ice. And I remember the comics showing him using those skates on ice bridges he created himself, Bobby Drake style, far more than just on snow
I think I should read a book on this. Bionicle has attracted me as much as Galidor, but there must be more to it, reading the comments.
@LegoDavid said: "You do realize we haven't had a Bionicle set on RSotD in almost a month, right? I consider that a pretty decently long break."
We had a Bionicle set, like, six days ago. And another one 10 days prior to that.
The only thing about the Toa Nuva I was never quite a fan of were the Kanohi Nuva. I think other than the Toa Mata, Toa Metru and Toa Mahri, as well as Takanuva and Lhikan, I never liked the Great Masks that the rest had.
Po ha tu! Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew!
I have it! The model, once built, looked far better than the box picture.
@Wrecknbuild said:
"I think I should read a book on this. Bionicle has attracted me as much as Galidor, but there must be more to it, reading the comments."
For a single-book overview of the majority of the storyline, I'd probably suggest Makuta's Guide to the Universe; it doesn't cover the last year-and-a-half of Bionicle, since those took place outside said universe, but it covers the overall flow of the story from 2001 - 2008, with focus on specific important characters, locations, and story excerpts. If any book serves as a good general overview, it's probably that one ^^
@GSR_MataNui said:
"Unlike all the other Toa, Pohatu did not carry a weapon, and while he would engage in fisticuffs he considered himself a pacifist."
Huh, I did not know this. I mean, I knew he didn't have a traditional weapon, but not about being a pacifist. Time for me to turn in my Bionicle badge, I'm clearly incompetent xD
-
For myself, Pohatu was... my last of the Toa Nuva, along with Onua. Kind of a reversal of the original Toa, where Onua was my first and Pohatu my second, but... I dunno, I guess they just didn't stand out to me, the same way that their fellows did. I know Kopaka and Tahu particularly wowed me with their new designs, and Lewa and Gali followed a little while after, but... I dunno, I suppose maybe Pohatu and Onua's new masks didn't appeal to me in the same way as the others'? I don't honestly remember, I just know that I wasn't in any great hurry to get those two... or it may have been because their Mata designs were my favourites so I was more reluctant to 'replace' them than I was with the others.
Eventually I got them during our annual Legoland Windsor trip in 2003 (interestingly, almost exactly a year after my first Nuva, Kopaka, who I'd got on the same trip the year before), after Mask of Light made them cool to me again... where I thiiiiink they may have been on a buy-one-get-one-half-price reduction, too.
On an aside note, the Nuva started an odd trend of their weapons being attached to their hands differently in the official images to in the instructions, as seen here too. In the instructions for Pohatu, you were told to attach his claws into the axel-hole on the narrow side of his hand; while the box-art shows them in the wide side instead. I've no idea to this day if that was a mistake, or if it was intentional to show that they could be used either way.
Unpopular opinion here, but I actually kind of like the Kanohi Nuva. I agree that they are a big downgrade from the masks that came out a year prior, but I still quite like their unique look.
Ah, Pohatu Nuva. The only Toa Nuva who came with their Toa Mata self's accessories.
Favorite Toa.
@xccj:
His original mask looked like a rodent head, which fit very well with his domain and physique. The Nuva mask...looked like a wilted flower. And they put his armor on normal even though his torso was flipped.
@Lego_Lord_Mayorca:
Back in the day, I posted pictures of all six versions on Mask of Destiny. As I recall, the mods required to give the cold trio a perfect fit were very minor. Kopaka and Lewa had those stupid Throwbot arms, and the sharp elbow made it difficult to lose the arm in a normal position and still close the harness. Kopaka’s shield was another problem, as I don’t think I had to remove any of their gear before installing them. Gali’s socket joint took up a little more space than the ball on Tahu’s chest, so the Bohrok canopy had to be repositioned so it would leave a little more space. Onua has no neck, though, so the whole canopy had to be lowered quite a bit to clear his chin. And Pohatu...was just the worst. I had to extensively redesign the cockpit area to accommodate that upside-down torso, and I think his giant feet required another tweak. But the Exo-Toa was clearly designed specifically to accommodate Tahu, with no real consideration for any of the other five characters.
Coolest thing I ever did with an Exo-Toa, though, was I got permission to pose Evil Tahu in the display model at New York Toy Fair months before it was officially released.
@LegoDavid said:
"Unpopular opinion here, but I actually kind of like the Kanohi Nuva. I agree that they are a big downgrade from the masks that came out a year prior, but I still quite like their unique look. "
Who said your opinion was unpopular? The Kanohi Nuva were awesome! Sure, the base template shape for them feels a bit redundant, but they were still awesome! My one regret is not being able to find/see any in other than their base colors.
@GSR_MataNui
Pohatu was the pleasant one, wasn't he? Lewa has always been my favorite, but Pohatu is that one guy who's almost always optimistic, though not to the point of rebounding off the walls all the time. I've always liked him. His elemental power, however, I've always found a bit hard to comprehend how it works. Does he use telekinesis on boulders? Is he just super strong and that's it? I've never been able to tell. Anyway, he's definitely a favorite of mine. And people auto-think that the brown dudes from Bionicle are the boring ones...
And yes, they did ruin him in the new Bionicle. And Kopaka. And, in a way, Tahu.
@Squidkid_Belmont said:
"His elemental power, however, I've always found a bit hard to comprehend how it works. Does he use telekinesis on boulders? Is he just super strong and that's it? I've never been able to tell."
Amongst other things, I'm pretty sure he's able to create stone out of thin air, like the other Toa can with their elements... though the story didn't show this much, since stone always seemed to be around when he needed it anyway, so he rarely had to conjure any. He can also manipulate any stone in his vicinity: in one comic, for example, he caused a wall of stone to erupt from the ground to block a Bohrok advance; and in one of the serials he was able to remotely cause an entire fortress to collapse because he could make the stones it was comprised of do his bidding.
You're definitely right, though; his elemental powers are showcased a lot less than his fellow Toa... I guess just because, graphically, it's easier to show him picking up a rock and throwing it than to represent more complex uses of it. For that matter, he was the only Toa who didn't get to use his elemental power at all in Mask of Light... he was probably the most short-changed by that movie, since all he really got to do was throw his claws twice and that was it!
@ThatBionicleGuy said:
" @Squidkid_Belmont said:
"His elemental power, however, I've always found a bit hard to comprehend how it works. Does he use telekinesis on boulders? Is he just super strong and that's it? I've never been able to tell."
Amongst other things, I'm pretty sure he's able to create stone out of thin air, like the other Toa can with their elements... though the story didn't show this much, since stone always seemed to be around when he needed it anyway, so he rarely had to conjure any. He can also manipulate any stone in his vicinity: in one comic, for example, he caused a wall of stone to erupt from the ground to block a Bohrok advance; and in one of the serials he was able to remotely cause an entire fortress to collapse because he could make the stones it was comprised of do his bidding.
You're definitely right, though; his elemental powers are showcased a lot less than his fellow Toa... I guess just because, graphically, it's easier to show him picking up a rock and throwing it than to represent more complex uses of it. For that matter, he was the only Toa who didn't get to use his elemental power at all in Mask of Light... he was probably the most short-changed by that movie, since all he really got to do was throw his claws twice and that was it!"
True! Thanks!
This guy was my second Bionicle set after a McDonald’s Kongu. This was the one that really got me into the theme
Nice looking guy, if you ask me. I remember seeing him in DK’s The LEGO Book sometime ago...