The goggles combined with the facial expression and chin is practically a meme template.
It all just looks so goofy.

I had this one along with the other hero factory ones!

I completely skipped/missed getting Hero Factory, so scrolling my first thought was "I don't remember that Bionicle"--of course I don't! Crazy to think Hero Factory is old enough for RSOD, but here we are.

The chin on this lad is definitely prominent enough to mention. He's a bit "Toa Lhikan"-like in bearing a shield and no weapon. Though I suppose, these days, I ought to say "Captain America-like."

What is it with large-scale LEGO figures and abnormally large chins?

Love the combination of the jaw and goggles. Even as a kid it seemed to crack me up.

I remember that my friend had this one. He was undoubtedly our favourite due to his absurdly hilarious goggles, and because of that he was played with way more than anyone else we owned. I finally got my own copy earlier this year, which I’ve proudly displayed at the top of my shelf.

Ah yes, this was part of the line that replaced old Bionicle parts with the buildable figure joints we have now. Can't help but feel that was one of the biggest downgrades Lego ever made.

I remember when Hero Factory launched Bionicle fans lost their minds - not in a good way.

I can’t blame them. It’d be like if Classic Space went straight to Rock Raiders with zero in-between or explanation.

I don’t know if it killed constraction, but it certainly blew up Bionicle.

“The lime green joints will no longer be of any concern to us. I’ve just received word that The Lego Group has dissolved the Technic joints permanently. The last remnants of the old Bionicle have been swept away.”

This wave was the first introduction of CCBS that fully replaced the technic style system used in Bionicle. While I vastly prefer the robotic aesthetic of Bionicle, there’s no denying that CCBS was far more durable than the old technic joints were, and far more suited for action-figure play.

I'll make it a bit fast tonight but here's your lore.

Hero Factory was an interstellar police force that specialized in developing robotic defenders for planets across the galaxy. One of their most recent members, a part of Alpha Team, was young William Furno. Furno was a bright and competitive hero, always striving to prove himself, though his impatience and over-confidence would often get the better of him. Through his efforts he managed to become the leader of Alpha Team's Rookies, and under his lead the Rookies reached full hero status in record time.

Not long after Furno and co's promotion to full heroes, Hero Factory went through a major shake up. The planets HF defended had quite the diverse environments, and villains even more diverse combat styles, so equipping heroes for combat was often a cumbersome ordeal. This changed with the introduction of the new 2.0 model of Heroes! The 2.0 had a more modular endoskeleton and easier to detach exoskeleton, allowing upgrades to be swapped in and out of heroes in just a few minutes, getting them to the rescue as fast as possible. (This was all an in-universe explanation for swapping the Inika/Av-Matoran build for CCBS.)

Alpha Team was selected to test the new program. Stormer, Furno, Breeze, and Surge were provided with the upgrade and were given two 2.0 Rookies, Evo and Nex, to help in the program's first test mission, the Ordeal of Fire!

A selection of mining robots on a far of fuel rig had gone mad with power! After tapping into the supply of energy they worked to create, the bots became addicted, attacking their fellows and superiors to collect as much fuel and power as possible. This gang of villains began attacking fuel stations across the galaxy, including a hero fuel tanker station, which they promptly set ablaze. Furno and gang were equipped with heat resistance armor and ice blasting weapons/shields and set off to the tanker, on a quest to extinguish the flames and capture the Fire Villains.

So ... Space Tahu fights space druggies?

@iwybs said:
"So ... Space Tahu fights space druggies?"

In real time too. Hero Factory is set in the years it released (2010-2014) as a faraway alien police force that just made contact with modern humanity by... podcasting.

The goggles make me lose it every single time. Plus, how much of his face is exposed makes him have what looks to me like a smug grin.

You know, it is interesting how Knock-off companies still produce fake versions of those 2011 Hero Factory sets even today, ten years after those sets came out. I went to a local toy store recently, and I saw a whole bunch of knock-off Hero Factory sets available on the shelves, including this one.

I had this set as a kid, and I loved it. Sure, the googles and the frown do look a bit goofy, but I do think that is part of this guy's charm.

@peterlmorris said:
"I don’t know if it killed constraction, but it certainly blew up Bionicle."

No, it didn't. Bionicle's cancellation was planned two years before it even actually happened, and without Hero Factory, Constraction as a whole would have probably died with it. If anything, I would argue that Hero Factory was actually the thing that saved Constraction.... This theme very much succeeded in the same place where Bionicle Generation 2 failed.

@MrBob said:
"“The lime green joints will no longer be of any concern to us. I’ve just received word that The Lego Group has dissolved the Technic joints permanently. The last remnants of the old Bionicle have been swept away.”

This wave was the first introduction of CCBS that fully replaced the technic style system used in Bionicle. While I vastly prefer the robotic aesthetic of Bionicle, there’s no denying that CCBS was far more durable than the old technic joints were, and far more suited for action-figure play."

"Don't be too proud of this CCBS terror you constructed. The ability to destroy a earlier style of building is insignificant compared to the power of nearly bankrupting a company." - Jack Stone (with head-nodding from his fellow masters of evil; Galidor, Scala, and Belville.)

This set is so nostalgic! It was my first HERO FACTORY set!

@Gatanui said:
" @LegoDavid said:

" No, it didn't. Bionicle's cancellation was planned two years before it even actually happened, and without Hero Factory, Constraction as a whole would have probably died with it. If anything, I would argue that Hero Factory was actually the thing that saved Constraction.... This theme very much succeeded in the same place where Bionicle Generation 2 failed. "

Where do you get those two years from? I don't think the cancelation was planned before 2009. I mean, 2009 in its entirety was a plan to boost sales through a soft reboot, I'd think they would at least have given it a chance (even more so considering they invested into a movie that year)."

The reason the Great Spirt Robot was revealed in 2008 was because the writers of the story knew that the theme was approaching its cancellation. And from what we know, LEGO themes are usually developed around two years before their release, so I think it is pretty safe to assume that the people working on Bionicle in 2008 already knew about its inevitable incoming cancellation.
I feel like 2009 was a half-baked attempt at bring in new fans into the series, but when that didn't work out, they just proceeded with the initial plan of replacing Bionicle with an entirely new theme.

@ThatBionicleGuy said:
"Why... the armour plates on his legs. Why does his right leg have the small plate on the thigh and the large plate on the shin, while his left leg has them the other way around? It creates a strange sense of imbalance."

This particular wave of Hero Factory was the first to ever introduce the brand new CCBS system, so by the nature of that, all the builds were very experimental. The set designers were working with a brand new system they had never touched before, so of course they would play around with it in strange ways. So some of those early CCBS sets were a bit clunky in their design, but the style definitely improved and got more refined as time went on. If you look at some of the later sets, you'll notice that most of them have a pretty consistent armor placement.
I would highly recommend taking a more in-depth look at the Hero Factory theme as a whole, because there is a lot of fascinating stuff to discover if you were previously unfamiliar with it.

@Gatanui since Lego plans several years in advance, remember the work for the 2008 wave was being done in 2006, and the 2009 wave started planning in 2007. The choice to cancel the line was made then roughly 2008, when production on the 2009 sets was already underway, and the Bionicle team was able to convince Lego to release the 2010 wave as a final set wave. But yeah, 2009 released with Lego knowing internally it was a soft-reboot for a theme that was already about to die anyways, and the deal to make a new Bionicle trilogy was instead modified to cover the Hero Factory show (hence why the Legend Reborn and the early Hero Factory episodes share the same production team, it was contractually a continuation of their obligation to work with Lego).