Wow, not holding back, just getting to the 2012 stuff right away in the new year.

I was expecting a Friends set (since they're now eligible for RSotD, aren't they?) and got Thornraxx instead.

Now I'm picturing Thornraxx attacking Heartlake City.

Happy Evisceration — I mean, New Year.

@Zordboy said:
"I was expecting a Friends set (since they're now eligible for RSotD, aren't they?) and got Thornraxx instead.

Now I'm picturing Thornraxx attacking Heartlake City. "

Yep, yep, yep as Ducky would say!

The Breakout wave generally had very creative non-humanoid builds for a lot of the villains, and this was one of them. I love the color scheme. The set looks quite good but it wasn't very poseable unfortunately.

@Bison_Bricks said: "That’s the creepiest SCALA set I’ve ever seen!"

... you weren't here for "My Dad", were you?

Geez… where’s my can of Raid and a big fly swatter?

Poor Thornraxx. This guy was so overshadowed by the other sets that came out at the time that even the show ignored him...

@MutoidMan said:
"Geez… where’s my can of Raid and a big fly swatter?"

This comment was sponsored by Raid: Shadow Legends!!! Blah blah blah special code blah blah.

I think he's named after the Thornax fruit from Bionicle, if so then it would've been cool if they brought back that piece for this set. Alas, they didn't; I already have a few from the 2009 sets but nobody can truly have too many pieces that look like naval mines.

@Trigger_ said:
"I think he's named after the Thornax fruit from Bionicle"

I always though it was a combination of ‘thorn’, as in the little spikes he’s covered in, and ‘thorax’.

Wow, didn't realize this guy was that old already, feels like yesterday!

Given he didn't even show up in the show I'll keep his lore quick.

HERO Factory was an interstellar police agency run by robotic heroes tasked with capturing and containing the galaxy's worst villains. One day, a scheme from the villain Black Phantom took place (seemingly with help from the presumed dead Von Nebula) to open all cells in HF's prison to release it's captive criminals back into the wild. This mass Breakout lead to each hero being equipped with specialized gear to each hunt down a convict (in what I would personally call the best two waves of the entire franchise. The villains may be par for the course but to this day I still gush over the Breakout versions of the heroes.)

One of the escapees was Thornraxx. A wasp like creature from Hivilus V.* After escaping he returned to his home planet to recruit more members of his species to take down Hero Factory. Natalie Breez was tasked with hunting down the convict, and she used a pair of jet boots to navigate the hive and capture him.

Thornraxx stands out against other HF villains as he is both a unique entity AND a swarm villain, with the name referring to the specific extra-cruel-escapee, but the build being identical to all other members of his species. Most villains are one or the other (Splitface is unique, Raw Jaw is swarm, ect.)

*(unlike most BIONICLE locations I had to look that one up, I'm not THAT good...)

I am no officially old.

This guy had one of the simplest but coolest designs out of any of the ccbs sets. I remember the torso was built out of 1 technic beam with 2 ball joint add-on pieces and it was a genius design. It's shame it gets overlooked because there were so many sets that year but I always appreciated the sets that would change up the formula a bit.

2012 was the peak of the Hero Factory line, hands down. If you look at Google Trends, you'll notice that interest in the line peaked during that year, which I think says a lot for a line that had kind of had a rocky start.
Thornaxx was one of the more overlooked sets, indeed, primarily because he never appeared in the show... Which I will never understand why. He is such a unique character, and I would have loved to see him animated on-screen. Same for all the other villains that never got show representation, such as Core Hunter and XT4.
Well well, I guess having your characters appear in the show really does boost sales for it, doesn't it?

Thornraxx is one of my HERO FACTORY sets! I really like the look of the set, and I had so much fun fighting Thornraxx on his boss level when the Breakout Game was around.

@LegoDavid said:
"2012 was the peak of the Hero Factory line, hands down. If you look at Google Trends, you'll notice that interest in the line peaked during that year, which I think says a lot for a line that had kind of had a rocky start.
Thornaxx was one of the more overlooked sets, indeed, primarily because he never appeared in the show... Which I will never understand why. He is such a unique character, and I would have loved to see him animated on-screen. Same for all the other villains that never got show representation, such as Core Hunter and XT4.
Well well, I guess having your characters appear in the show really does boost sales for it, doesn't it? "

The main reason why Thornraxx and the other Heroes and Villains of that year didn't appear is that they couldn't get all of them to appear on just two episodes. But it would have been cool if they had released more episodes that year so that every character could appear.

And Villains like Core Hunter had a big story that was told through the Hero Factory Secret Mission book series. https://herofactory.fandom.com/wiki/Core_Hunter

@LegoDavid:
Oh, you have no idea. SW was incredibly successful in 1999...and again in 2002...and yet again in 2005. The four years in the gaps saw sales drop. The prequel movies released in 1999, 2002, and 2005, and there weren’t any TV shows until a few years later. What they learned during those years is that a broad theme, especially for a licensed IP, really benefits from having a steady stream of movies or a TV show to help drive interest. No surprise there. We used to have a law in the US that you could make toys based on a TV series, but you couldn’t make a TV series based on toys. I think the first Transformers series even got rushed to market because they couldn’t start importing the existing toy line into the US until they had a show that they could put in front of it. They knew the value of having a show to advertise the toys.

Why do you think Ninjago is still going strong after so many years? Usually a kid’s show will be capped at 65 eps, which allows four shows to rotate annually in the same M-F time slot, but Ninjago has lasted 11 years, 14 seasons, and 182 episodes so far, and shows no signs of slowing down. The 65 cap was based on the idea of constantly trying to get the next new hit on the air, rather than seeing how long you could stay at the top. Turns out if you can keep the quality up, the show and the toys can feed into, and off of, each others’ success.