Editing Bionicle (section)

==History==

[[File:Bionicle-Poster-1-.jpg|thumb|right|500px|Hold on to your britches, all you ten-year olds out there. You're in for a ride.]]

Despite always being a popular toy line among children, the Lego Group in the late 90's was on the verge of bankruptcy. Most of Lego’s sets leaned heavily on generic themes like “knights” and “pirates” and quite deliberately had no lore or narrative behind them except for what kids made up in their head while playing with them. [[Star Wars]] was still their only licensed IP at the time, and while its sets sold like hotcakes by virtue of being fucking Star Wars, it produced limited returns for the company due to having to pay royalties to Lucasfilm. Lego, realizing that kids like stories, tried to obtain the rights to make other licensed sets, but were largely unsuccessful. By all market projections, they would have gone kaput within the 2000’s.

Lego’s answer came from within its “Technic” theme, funcional sets that eschewed bricks in favor of specialized pieces like gears, axles, liftarms, and – most crucially – ball-and-socket joints, which some dude at Lego discovered could be used to build some kickass action figures. The initial pitch by employees involved in marketing was for a voodoo-inspired theme, but Alastair Swinnerton worked with them on revising the concept over multiple drafts into a Polynesian-inspired story about biological technological chronicles, which inspired the name Bionicle. The end result was a VERY elaborate story which spanned multiple generations, full of plot hooks and creatures to make sets of. Bob Thompson led the team that grouped the story by medium.

After promising results from test markets in Europe and Australia, the first six sets (the OG Toa) were released with only mild advertising in North America in the 2000 Christmas season. They were an AMAZING success, earning the company more revenue than any line previously. Lego quickly scrambled to market it, making [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk47EDfWK10 CG television commercials depicting each of the heroes] as well as selling boxed sets containing masks molded in the shape of each of the six but in each other's colors.

Lego Magazine began featuring an ongoing comic series written by Greg Farshtey that contained most of the lore for the series, and was later published by DC Comics as an ongoing series. Tie-in video games also factored heavily in the series promotion, starting with Flash games on the official website, and later games for PlayStation 2, Game Boy Advance, etc. Four direct-to-home-video movies and many shorts were made, and a few musicians made a career just writing music for Bionicle (Rob Zombie was even on board to create a song for Bionicle at one point). Podcasts and novels were also involved in some of the storytelling, although they were largely sidelined in favor of the visual media.

The Bionicle theme (which is what groupings of sets under a given, well, theme are called in Lego) continued through multiple generations until 2010 when it was ended in favor of the newer original lines including Ninjago. Like most companies in the late 2010's, Lego resurrected the Bionicle line in 2015 to cash in on nostalgia and start a new generation with a Lego addiction the same as the last. As of now, research indicates 85% of American children know about Bionicle and 45% own at least one set.