I got the Mahri/Barraki McDonald's sealed set! For only about $32 shipped including taxes from ebay. They're not real bionicle legos but these things were such a huge part of my childhood during the latter bionicle years with the 2006,07, and 08 McDonald's sets. I remember begging my parents to take me to McDonald's to get a happy meal when I was 9 and hoping I could collect them all.. Hahli has great blue light piping Always disliked how they gave her a weird splits stance with the legs that made it impossible to really stand unless she uses her claw as a third leg I don't have enough shelf space for em all but luckily most of them stand up straight on their own except for Carapar and Takadox who each have one foot that's slightly warped at an angle Mantax is going to have be disassembled if I want to fix his LED light up eyes gimmick. All McDonalds and burger king like happy meal toys use these weird triangle shaped screws so it'll take a special precision T7 (star shape?) Screwbit to undo it. It was painfully annoying to disassemble Mantax... had to pry open the entire figure with barely any leverage to separate it and hoping to do as little cosmetic damage as possible. They slot it on 4 big tabs inside, the center 2 of which had the screws, and the little white marks I'm guessing are signs of the gummy plastic slightly melting onto each other after being encased for 15 years. I don't think they put glue to assemble these cheap figures? Luckily even tho there's battery acid from the LR41s being stuck in there for years, the batteries are so tiny that the acid didn't touch anything else on the inside.
AMAZON And here we go. I'll get it out of the way right at the start, Amazon is my favorite figure from the first wave of Slizers. Might seem like a hypocritical choice given how much time I've spent singing the praises of the weirdest elements of this line, but Amazon has the rule of cool. And hey, I can still sneak something in about how weird that is - he's supposed to be one of the bad guys, and not even the main one. Sure, Bionicle has a lot of cool-looking villain sets, but typically the heroes are supposed to be the most appealing and exciting figures. In the Slizer world, one of the most heroic and colorful figures, one of the most posable, is just some goon, while the lead hero is a little hunchbacked gremlin. Like most of his contemporaries, Amazon is an outstanding figure on the basis of motif. Lego had the green guy archetype figured out from the start. No swamp mystic or old forest hermit; they're all swashbuckling adventurers. To that end, in my eye, this guy has a pretty strong samurai vibe. While his Ninja katana is mostly used as a machete to cut through the jungle, I think it pulls double duty pretty easily when combined with his broad shoulders and the hip setup that allow for some wide, planted stances. He's mostly green, but with just enough of that wonderful turquoise color in just the right spots to look like he's armored. Some shoulder pads and a helmet, some gloves, and some ankle guards or boots. Along with that impassive stare, I can totally hear Toshiro Mifune's voice coming from Amazon. His range of motion isn't outstanding by most standards, but compared to most of the other Slizers he's got it pretty good. Though his gear function is just the standard "ab crunch", I think it works exceptionally well here, like on Ski, allowing him to get into characterful brooding or battle-ready stances. Only half of the first eight Slizers have printed visors, and this is far and away my favorite one. Torch and Scuba's are both excellent, as is the next figure's, don't get me wrong, but in some ways they do feel a bit generic sci-fi, for all their detail. Amazon's feels really fresh and unique. Though clearly mechanical, it has a strong tiger theme that just works so well with a jungle character and is really intimidating. He's clearly not an animal-looking dude like some of the others, but he still chooses to go around looking like this. Are those scars on one side? More than the other three from this wave, this one feels like a mask and not his true face, another little inkling of what's to come in a few years of Technic. A couple of the other figures have it too, but I love the huge central gear on this guy. It adds a lot of depth and dynamic angles to his build and adds to his overall large, solid vibe. He's also the only one with this mid-sized gear to operate the function, another little variation that's much appreciated. The antenna is another nice System piece inclusion, too. I guess it's hard for him to get reception under the jungle canopy. I imagine this gets caught and bent on branches and leaves a lot as he cuts his way through. Everything about this figure is just cool. In a way, he feels the most evolved of all the Slizers in terms of the design philosophy Bionicle would move towards, attempting to make most figures serious and believable. But he's still a Slizer, and so he's just the least dorky dork on the planet of dorks which is very charming. He's the Dinobot of the bunch, the one who takes himself way too seriously to the amusement and bemusement of everyone around him. A+. More great art with more American box art censorship. Like Electro, in other markets the tree has glowing red eyes. You can still make out the nose and jagged mouth and hollow eye sockets here, which again, is frankly creepier. I really appreciate the swamp environment too. Roboriders would lean into this even harder and it would then disappear until 2008, where it wasn't even associated with a green character specifically. Also, once again I've got one of those great bonus disks courtesy of @Nope this time featuring Amazon in battle with a giant fly trap. Pretty cool. These disks account for like 50% of the lore and worldbuilding of the theme.
Yooo Amazon! He was one of the Throwbots I had as a kid and, along with Jet/Judge, was one I fondly remember. I was unfamiliar with the story, so I always viewed him as a good guy. Same with Judge. Oddly enough both turned out to be the bad guys lol. I guess fighting mutated landscapes just seemed more important than fighting amongst themselves.
Jungle/Amazon was my first Slizer as well, and honestly, one of the best. In my mind, Jungle was related (I mean, insofar as robots can be related to each other) to the good team, but betrayed them and joined Judge's side for power. This would make Later Developments all the more tragic. please lego. a Slizers reboot. I'll be fine with it from System even, I just want these dorks back
JUDGE Wrapping things up for the first wave with another cool and anomalous figure. Would you have it any other way? It's not quite clear what exactly Judge represents. He's supposed to be the main villain of the first wave of Slizers, but his goals and motives are never explained. Nor is it obvious what element or theme he tracks to. We've seen fire, stone, ice, water, and jungle, which are all familiar, electricity, a little less so, and "city", which while not an element, is at least a very clear theme. What's Judge? His European name is Jet, and he flies. Maybe air? But Roboriders would use yellow and black, too, for a figure called "Power", and most of their other color choices track pretty well with Slizers. Like Turbo and Electro, Judge is more indicative of the proto-constraction side of Slizers than he is of the things Lego would refine for future themes. He's vestigial, an evolutionary step in the wrong direction. And that's super interesting; that's what gives Slizers all of its flavor. I have to say, this is the first figure where I don't think my photos do it a lot of justice. Judge is definitely a thin, lanky dude, but every angle I could get almost makes him look too reedy, too insubstantial. I think he has a really appealing profile in person, thanks to his body setup. Judge uses the gearbox we've seen before on Granite and Electro, allowing the angle of his propellers to be adjusted. While this is nowhere near as exciting as the other two's, whose functions were meant to be used quickly and repeatedly, it does leave him with a unique hunched, birdlike stance, befitting a slimy schemer. I don't like the way his head is connected, though, only really allowing for up and down movement. Not big on the dual throwing arms either. It does give him a bit of that "final boss" vibe, twice as effective as any other Slizer, but is a big blow to the kinds of poses you can get him into. Very nice face print as usual. I do like that this one isn't overtly sinister, in fact it looks a whole lot nicer than Torch's. The caution lines, the left eye that looks haphazardly affixed over a once-symmetrical face, and that inhuman, permanently open mouth are all really intriguing. Probably by second favorite behind Amazon's. I think this one might be the one that most looks like a face; I can't really imagine Judge with just the Slizer head underneath. He needs that kind of cold, dead stare. He looks his best in flying poses, I think, which may have been another reason for the double throwing arms. He almost has a Transformer quality to him, the way you need to rearrange the limbs. I really like the clunky and awkward vibe of the flight mode - if he were to land, he kind of needs to come in hot and unfold himself as he slows down, or he just comes to a stop lying flat on the ground and has to pick himself up. Not a physically imposing villain at all, I guess his intellect and ambitions are what make him threatening. Pure classic Technic figure. Big fan of how much yellow there is, but I really think we've seen enough black across this wave. I guess it works well enough here for the caution tape theme, but it is a little boring when it's so prevalent on several figures. I guess I'll talk a little more about the Slizer lore since Judge is central to a lot of it (There are two versions actually, American and European, but seeing as in the second wave there is essentially one storyline that requires elements of the American one to make sense, that's the one I go by). The Slizers all live on the beach ball planet, cut into several elementally-themed regions (sound familiar?). Judge does not have his own region, instead inhabiting a structure called the Slizer Dome at the north pole. This is a big arena where Slizers do combat with each other and sometimes compete in various challenges, competing for resources. When this arrangement was made is never explained, nor is what Judge gets out of it, but his name makes his role in the Dome's proceedings self-evident, no? Each character also has a special energy source they hunt for, shown on their highest level disk. Most of these are things found in their respective regions, such as tree sap or diamonds. Judge instead runs on "cosmic background radiation", and whereas all of the other characters' disks show them dealing with creatures and exploring their territories, Judge's show him on his search for power near the dome, even seemingly killing another Slizer in the process. His highest level disk, indicating power source, shows the entire planet and is one pip higher than anyone else's highest. Frightening implications. All that said, what exactly he wants is never really explored, nor is his relation to the other evil Slizers (well, except for one that we'll see in the second wave). The following year of Slizers would radically alter the storyline, cutting short the very sparse and tenuous threads already established. Judge remains an intriguing and unknown villain among the Technic pantheon, standing very small next to the Makuta, the Piraka, and others. Disks and box art. Love that middle one of him throwing the disks. The one on the right technically isn't Judge's, one of the second wave figures reuses the same pattern, strangely. What that means we can explore when the time comes. Note the left disk, usually displaying some kind of elemental symbol, instead denotes the Slizer Dome, and thus Judge himself, as a nexus of all seven of the planet's regions. I really love what little we see of the Slizer Dome here - a bit of that caution tape motif that's on Judge himself, a searchlight in the back as if this is some kind of grand event and not a necessity for the handful of inhabitants to coexist, and the weird star-hoop-energy creature. Not exactly evil wildlife like most of the others, I guess this is more of an arena-generated enemy for Slizers to fight? I think it shows up in one of the little comics in that capacity. Good stuff. His yellow looks really nice in that lighting.
I got all the Bionicles I still have out of storage. All of the Toa Mata, Toa Metru, Toa… 2015. 1 Bohrok, 2 Vakhi, 5 Protectors, Matoran Ekimu, a few Glatorian, 4 custom Toa I made back in 2013, and the three villians of Bionicle 2015. I also have this, which I have learned apperently goes for a pretty penny these days..
I put both my masks up on ebay. If anybody wants to buy them, let me know. I’ll even sell them both on here together for $400. EDIT: Holy shit… the Kaukau sold instantly!
