This man is canon, but not really, I think he's in a bit of a gray area. The vehicle definitely is though since it was in The Legend Reborn movie. SKOPIO!

Pssh, this is no Bionicle set, this is obviously a Mad Max set disguised as a more child-friendly theme.

I want to ride on of these

@Randomness said:
"Pssh, this is no Bionicle set, this is obviously a Mad Max set disguised as a more child-friendly theme."
Well, you're not entirely wrong there. This was part of 2009, which took place on Bara Magna, a desert world, where people settled disputes with gladiatorial battles in exchange for resources. And I'm sure there was some racing, too. A bit of Road Warrior and Thunderdome in there. Fury Road hadn't come out yet though.

@Randomness said:
"Pssh, this is no Bionicle set, this is obviously a Mad Max set disguised as a more child-friendly theme."

Yeah 2009 Bionicle has a post apocalypse desert scavenger theme going on as @MCLegoboy already pointed out. Heavy focus on vehicles and mounts, so you can create a Mad Max style vehicle chase with the 2009 line up.

@Trigger_ said:
"I want to ride on of these"

Climb right up on the skull and we’ll strap you down! Hey, you said “ride”, not “drive”.

The rare Bionicle set with two kinds of launcher, in this case Midak Skyblaster and Thornax shooter.

I'm not a fan of Bionicle but this looks very cool.

This was a fun set to build, with a very fun vehicle function. Not to mention a few nice unique tan and silver elements. Honestly would count it as my favorite vehicle set from the later years of Bionicle Gen 1.

Funny enough my brother and I just managed to get our hands on this guy earlier this year. Very fun.

Long ago the eight tribes of Spherus Manga lived in harmony. Fire, Water, Ice, Jungle, Iron, Rock, Sand, and Earth*. Each named after the region of land where they lived.

In ancient times these tribes went through many conflicts and tribulations. The "Dreaming Plague" brought on by the Eldritch horror Annona all but wiped out the Iron Tribe. The females of the Skrall species developed psychic powers, dividing their race between the Rock Tribe proper and the Sisters of the Skrall. More members of the Rock Tribe would break free, becoming the nomadic Bone Hunters. But through all these trials one group would rise to power. The Great Beings.

The origin of the Great Beings is shrouded in mystery. Some say that Annona sensed their strange and fluid minds and attempted to slay them, only to heighten their gifts. Others treated them as gods among men, blessed with the gift of foresight. Whatever the case these twenty creatures would quickly rise to power. They had the strange capability to invent or create near anything they set their minds to, and soon became the Scientist Kings of the world. Under their guidance the tribes became born anew, with cybernetic implants that extended their lifeforce and granted new strength.

Despite the worship, the Great Beings had no desire to rule, they were only filled with the insatiable desire to create. And so they created new creatures to rule in their stead. A villager was chosen from each of the seven remaining tribes (sans Iron) to be imbued with immense power. These people were transformed into beings of pure elemental energy, inspired by their people's namesakes, and were set in charge of ruling each Tribe. These Elemental Lords would prove the Great Beings greatest folly.

Something resided deep within the planet's core. A substance ancient and mysterious, with a mind of its own. Energized Proterdermis was the lifeblood of Spherus Magna itself. The Elemetnal Lord of Earth sensed its power, and she began shifting and manipulating the planet's crust to draw it to the surface. She had a wicked plan indeed. She would let the other Lords fight over the substance, and take it from beneath their corpses.

The Elemental Lord of Ice was the first to find the spring, and the people of Spherus Magna came to cherish its fantastic powers. Energized Proterdermis could do many things. Some who touched it where given godlike powers. Some where twisted into hideous beasts. Others were destroyed entirely. But most importantly, it was an unmatched source of fuel and power for all to covet.

The EL of Ice laid claim to the substance, but the others protested. It was on his land yes, but a power this great should be for all to share. Or rather, for each's tribe to have. Th EL of Earth abstained from the conflict and slunk into the shadows. The remaining six tribes went to war. The Core War.

For around 200 years this bloody battle raged. Agori, Glatorian, and Skrall tearing each other to shreds over mere liquid and dreams of profit. Among their many terrible deeds came the Thornatus V9.

The Thornatus was originally designed by the Great Beings, but they found no use for it and so abandoned it in a stash. This stash was eventually discovered by Perditus, a high ranking general of the Fire Tribe. Perditus took the half built shells and blueprints and modified them to create a weapon of war. Thornatus were mass produced by all Tribes of the conflict. They were equipped with large bladed sides that could thrust out and forward to pierce foes, and five blasters to fire on the enemy. Heavy armor coated the machine, and while this slowed them down, it made them neigh impenetrable to enemy fire. While many weapons joined the Core War, the Thornatus buggy was the tank of the BIONICLE world.

As the Core War continued, the Great Beings made a terrible discovery. Not only was Energized Protodermis powerful, but it was an essential part of their world. EP functioned like a magic glue that kept the planet

As the Core War continued, the Great Beings made a terrible discovery. Not only was Energized Protodermis powerful, but it was an essential part of their world. EP functioned like a magic glue that kept the planet together and its natural elements in tandem. If too much was removed from the world's core, the entire planet would shatter. The Great Beings tried to warn the people of this danger, but they would not listen. The profits were to great to be had, too much had been invested already, the EP must continue to flow.

And so the Great Beings set about their greatest plan yet. Using the blueprints of a failed experiment from long ago, and an Energized Protodermis power source, they set to work crafting a machine. The Great Spirit Robot.

The GSR was a towering machine, three thousand kilometers high.** It was the ultimate culmination of their experiments and technologies. Giant domes containing artificual biomes made up its "organs." Person sized "nanobots" functioned like its "cells." It was part machine, part organic creature, part planet in of itself. Perhaps it was originally meant to be an Ark for the planet's people, but it never got to complete that task.

The function of the GSR was simple. It was to set out and explore the stars, studying the many races and peoples of the universe. It would then return and teach the people all it learned about cooperation, resource management, and conflict resolution, and fuse the planet back together to figuratively and literally reform the world.

The GSR was finished just in time, piloted by the Mata Nui AI, and launched just as tragedy struck. The Shattering.

The Core war ended in devastation. The Agori had been to greedy, and dug too deep. Without its EP core Spherus Magna went through a strange transformation. The ocean bulged and churned, splitting off into the Ocean Moon of Aqua Magna. The jungle to the north cracked and burst away as remaining vegetation withered, creating the Jungle Moon of Bota Magna. The remnants of dust and rock came to be known as the Desert World of Bara Magna.

The Great Beings and Earth Tribe remained stranded on the Jungle Moon. The Rest were stranded on the Desert World.

The people of Bara Manga were quick to regret their actions. They realized that war and conflict had gotten them into this mess, and further fighting would fix nothing. The Elemental Lords were banished from their tribes and fled to an old Great Being fortress. During this time, the Glatorian System was developed.

Under the Glatorian system each tribe would train a number of Glatorian warriors. Whenever there was debate or conflict among the tribes, these Glatorian would be sent out to engage in non-lethal arena combat. The victor would take the resource home for their tribe.

In this time Thornatus were repurposed. While some remained armed for special vehicle matches in the arena, most were stripped of their weaponry and became chariots. They soon became the most popular method of transport across the planet, with the likes of Metus and Kiina using them to get around.

As for Perditus he had an odd career. At one point he was the Second Glatorian of the Fire Tribe. He eventually left the prestigious position to become a vehicle combatant, but even then spent most of his time simply wandering the wastes. In truth, Preditus had been contacted by Velika, a Great Being who had snuck aboard the GSR, to keep him informed of the planet's goings-on. When Malum attempted to kill Strakk in the arena he was banished from the tribe. Raanu offered Perditus his old position of Second back, but Perditus refused.

As for the GSR, that's a story for another day. Even in creatures that great, cancers can fester...

*The Earth Tribe is actually a hotly contested topic. They were never mentioned in any official story material, but were originally planned for the 2010 plot before the theme's abrupt cancelation. Despite never appearing, the main book writer Greg Farshtey insists they are still canon.

**In the original story bible, the GSR was meant to be 3,000 Km high. In the f

**In the original story bible, the GSR was meant to be 3,000 Km high. In the final story, Greg Farshtey made 40 Million Feet the canon size, or around 12,000 Km. 3K Km is closer to how its depicted in visual media, and seems more plausible.

2009 vehicles were kinda weird; most of them had no direct story relevance and featured characters that weren't plot-important, but they were pretty unique nonetheless and had interesting ideas, like a snowmobile, a motorcycle with sidecar, and a Roman chariot.

This one was a highlight, not just because it had a good deal of prominence in The Legend Reborn as the default vehicle characters used, but also that visually it seemed to be a ground-based equivalent to 8942 , with a similarly-designed canopy.

While the driver is a distinct character, Perditus, his design almost feels purposely generic, being a minimally-distinct "Inika build" with a helmet mold that doesn't have much personality, which seems to implicitly encourage owners to swap him out with other characters during play.

The lack of recognizable or repeat characters across the 2009 vehicles did add some needed variety to the population of Bara Magna but I don't think that the choice was great for enticing sales compared to the 2008 vehicles, which used variants of characters featured in the retail canister sets. While duplicate characters in a single year are redundant, marketing vehicles around their drivers is general toy logic, and even with 2009 being a soft reboot with almost no familiar characters, placing variants canister Glatorian or Agori into these vehicles would generate symbiosis and create inherent significance to both the vehicle and character. As it is, despite Bionicle being my childhood and considering myself a huge fan, I can't name most of the 2009 vehicle pilots without looking them up. This is also definitely a factor of the shifts on how Lego published story content that year in particular, with only one novel excluding the film adaptation, relegating most of the vehicle characters to online story serials that petered out with a whimper. It's telling that I can name characters that never had sets featured in Matoran Universe stories easily but I have blank spots when it comes to characters that actually had physical products that had minimal to nonexistent presence in print media.

This thing is spikier than a 1990s comic character’s shoulder pads.