Random set of the day: Visorak Oohnorak
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 8744 Visorak Oohnorak, released during 2005. It's one of 46 Bionicle sets produced that year. It contains 47 pieces, and its retail price was US$9/£5.99.
It's owned by 2,038 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you might find it for sale at BrickLink or eBay.
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I foresee Lore-with-a-Capital-L today.
Going to need it really tell these clone builds apart--though, I'll admit, the Visorak did a good job mixing up colour schemes: a lot of unique primary/secondary combinations.
Was his name originally just Rak, but he kept messing things up so the others were always going Oh no Rak! so that just became part of his name?
Miyakan said: "Was his name originally just Rak, but he kept messing things up so the others were always going Oh no Rak! so that just became part of his name?"
... yes.
Spider! With only four legs, so that doesn't even qualify it as an Insect let alone an Arachnid.
What are bugs with four legs even called?
Do they even qualify as bugs?
Worms don't have legs and I think they do, but I don't think slugs and snails qualify because those are technically mollusks.
Animal dissemination is hard.
These are the important things in life.
If anyone remembers BZPower and the Comedy subforum on there, there was once a little BIONICLE spoof called "BORNICLE" that lovingly satirized and eviscerated the entire BIONICLE story. The 2005 story amongst the Visorak in Metru Nui was a prime space to let loose the ridiculousness because that year was probably the one year BIONICLE well and truly jumped the shark with all its criss-crossing side stories, weird staggered set releases, lame collectible Rhotuka, and set designs that were clone-y beyond compare. And to think I was actually excited for the Visorak upon their release in the summer of 2005 here in the USA! But anyway, back to BORNICLE...
Half the fun of writing BORNICLE was coming up with funny names for the characters. The Toa Nuva became Toga Losa. Kanohi Masks became Kablooie Masks. The Bohrok were renamed for different forms of pop music (Gothrok, Poprok, Softrok, etc.). And the Visorak were equally-treated. My favorite renaming was of Oohnorak because LEGO straight-up made it too easy. In BORNICLE, they became the OhNo!rak and were the most skittish of the Visorak horde. I was perhaps too harsh because out of all of the Visorak sets, I loved the Oohnorak the most, mainly for that wicked Halloween color scheme.
But anyway, that's all I really care to remember about this set without diving into its admittedly meager role in the BIONICLE story.
@Formendacil said:
"I'll admit, the Visorak did a good job mixing up colour schemes: a lot of unique primary/secondary combinations."
And this one was easily the most distinctive of the six. The others were just different shades of the same color, except for 8747, and we'd seen white and blue in Bionicle before. And maaaybe 8745 , but its brown was still red-tinted (as this was after the color changes), so they were still complementary colors, not contrasting ones.
Again we see the broken propellers. So disappointing how those type things have had so long to develop, but they still never work.
@MCLegoboy said:
"Spider! With only four legs, so that doesn't even qualify it as an Insect let alone an Arachnid.
What are bugs with four legs even called?
Do they even qualify as bugs?
Worms don't have legs and I think they do, but I don't think slugs and snails qualify because those are technically mollusks.
Animal dissemination is hard.
These are the important things in life."
Arachnoid or insectoid, depending on what ecological role it takes. Given the webs, I'd lean towards arachnoid. Worms are from the Annelida phylum, while insects are part of Arthropoda. So, only related in that both are considered animals.
Ooh!
Any relation to that one Bionicle from the Middle East, IranIraq?
Before we get into the lore I've got some community highlights I want to share.
The first is actually a sad one. TheShadowedOne1 was a BIONICLE Youtuber famous for making high quality stop motions and for voicing, unsurprisingly, The Shadowed One in various fan content. In 2017 he announced plans to adapt Time Trap, often considered the best BIONICLE novel, into a feature length film. In November 2022 he passed away at 28 years old, and the BIONICLE fandom didn't learn about it until last month.
In happier news Christain Faber put out another conapt art video, this time of alternate ways the time travel in Gen 2 might of worked. One of them involved a character sacrificing themselves to be melted down in the Kanohi Masks of Power from the 2001 story. A plot point that directly contradicts lore established... in Time Trap funnily enough. Another plan was people jumping into a "Well of Time" and getting stranded on other worlds. This came with a confirmation of the long held fan theory that Mr. Makuhero from HERO Factory was actually a Turaga from BIONICLE.
Alright lore time.
So we've covered the Visorak a lot here, I'll give the quick version.
Visorak were giant spiders bred by the Brotherhood of Maktua to conquer lands. They were equipped with powerful Hordika Venom that could mutate almost anything into a monstrous form. They served as the main antagonists of the 2005 story arc.
Oohnorak are actually my favorite Visorak, because of their powers. Oohnorak were capable of replicating the voices of other people, allowing them to lure people into traps or sow false commands during heated battles. They're capable of firing Rhotuka Spinners that can numb a foe, making it difficult for them to flee.
I always had a slight soft spot for the Oohnorak; one part their quite eye-catching colour scheme and one part their legs being shorter than other Visorak giving them a funny stubby look
Only set with the Bohrok eyes in trans yellow. Also one of the first sets to have Keetongu orange (although Keetongu came out at about the same time (depending on region) so the color got his name.)
Oh, I have this one.
Admittedly, I bought it last year on Bricklink, but I love it. The propeller thing is so much fun.
Ah, Ohnorak. I was gifted the remaining four vidorak I didn't own yet by a nephew a few years ago. So my experiece with it blended together a bit with the rest. They took up quite some space because of their flatness. Looking back its color scheme is great!
For me the most memorable thing about it was building Zivon. A giant scorpion using all 6 visorak, so large it uses visorak bodies as pincers.
And like with some other Bionicle parts, my longest association with it is seeing it in catalogs and after that experiencing the pincers as legs on the spider in 8894 Piraka Stronghold. I got that set back last year :D
@TheOtherMike the Roporak's brown is not reddish brown. It's a lighter shade also seen in the other Metru Nui Po-Metru characters.
@GSR_MataNui how awful about TheShadowedOne. I love his Youtube content. May he rest in peace!
The reveals about G2 sound really fun. I'll try to look into it if I have the time. Was this posted on Faber's blog?
@Binnekamp: I thought brown changed at the same time as the grays did, and didn't bother looking at the parts list. Looking at it now, I see that you were right and I was wrong. Oh well, they were still much more similar colors than 8744's. Thanks for the fact check, anyway!
@TheOtherMike you're right about reddish brown appearing alongside Dark Buish Gray and Light Bluish Gray in 2004 (or fall 2003). Light Brown, or 'Metru brown' just happens to be another color alongside it. Apparently it debuted in Duplo, was used as a skin color for Spider-Man 2 sets and then found its way into Bionicle. It was also Anakin Skywalker's hair color in the 2005 Revenge of the Sith sets. There's a reason lego almost went bankrupt in the early 2000s: they had many crazy specific colors that were used almost nowhere.
@Binnekamp:
They had many limited-use colors at a time when every pellet was pre-colored, so they were sitting on literal tons of raw materials that weren’t seeing much turnover. They had let their mold collection grow out of control, often producing similar, but incompatible parts for different themes, rather than seeing if there was an existing part that would do the job. They were investing time and resources into supporting themes that just weren’t pulling their weight. And they had no idea when they were making or losing money on the sale of any individual set. It was never just one problem that nearly drove them into the ground, but a combination of multiple problems.
My first Visorak! ...alongside Keelerak, since they were on a buy-one-get-one-half-price offer shortly after their release here in the UK, and I asked for those two as my Easter present Bionicle set(s) for that year.
At the time I wasn't particularly wowed by the Visorak - though they were a first tentative step away from the absolute clone sets we'd been seeing the past few years, since they mixed and matched limb pieces between them. In hindsight I enjoy 2005's story a lot; but back then I definitely lost that plot in favour of Revenge of the Sith hype. Both the non-humanoid designs and the way the Visorak's face/shell piece was only attached by a single axle at the front and so tended to flop forwards while playing - necessary for the snapping pincer play feature but frustrating otherwise - kept me from warming to them when they were new. It was only a couple of years later, when I started going completionist for the older sets I'd missed, that I chased down the remaining for Vissies through eBay and began to appreciate them more.
In hindsight, though, I have a soft spot for Oohno and Keele in particular, for being my first of a subtheme that I didn't appreciate enough at the time ^^
The only Visorak I got... I still think about scooping up the others to get a complete set, but they just didn't vibe with me as much as the Bohrok or later Piraka had.
@ThatBionicleGuy said:
"My first Visorak! ...alongside Keelerak, since they were on a buy-one-get-one-half-price offer shortly after their release here in the UK, and I asked for those two as my Easter present Bionicle set(s) for that year.
At the time I wasn't particularly wowed by the Visorak - though they were a first tentative step away from the absolute clone sets we'd been seeing the past few years, since they mixed and matched limb pieces between them. In hindsight I enjoy 2005's story a lot; but back then I definitely lost that plot in favour of Revenge of the Sith hype. Both the non-humanoid designs and the way the Visorak's face/shell piece was only attached by a single axle at the front and so tended to flop forwards while playing - necessary for the snapping pincer play feature but frustrating otherwise - kept me from warming to them when they were new. It was only a couple of years later, when I started going completionist for the older sets I'd missed, that I chased down the remaining for Vissies through eBay and began to appreciate them more.
In hindsight, though, I have a soft spot for Oohno and Keele in particular, for being my first of a subtheme that I didn't appreciate enough at the time ^^"
This seems to be similar to the personal history of many Bionicle fans, including me. I liked the 2005 sets more than most others but Revenge of the Sith sets took up so much of my budget that I never really got all that many of the 2005 Bionicles. Normally I'd at least get all six heroes and all six villains of each year but here I got none, only the titans and the two special edition Toa. By the time I watched Web of Shadows and really got into the 2005 storyline, despite its similarities to RotS, the Piraka were already on shelves and they were much more unique so my budget went to those and later the Toa Inika.
I then bought all Toa Hordika in 2013 and all Visorak around 2017 and they are quite good.
@MCLegoboy said:
"Spider! With only four legs, so that doesn't even qualify it as an Insect let alone an Arachnid.
What are bugs with four legs even called?
Do they even qualify as bugs?
Worms don't have legs and I think they do, but I don't think slugs and snails qualify because those are technically mollusks.
Animal dissemination is hard.
These are the important things in life."
I've seen a species of spider that sit in their webs with pairs of legs held together so they appear to only have four legs. Maybe this guy is emulating that.
IF you adjust the image, maybe squint a bit, that Flame-yellowish orange, or "keetorange" looks like yellow.
And it's got black, with some trans yellow eyes.
Blacktron Visorak.