BIONICLE: The Early Years
March 12, 2009 by Greg Farshtey
Filed under Papercutz Blog
BIONICLE got its start in 1999-2000, when an international team of people employed by the LEGO Company were tasked with coming up with a storyline-based LEGO line. The early working title was, believe it or not, “Bone-Heads of Voodoo Island.” The first story bible (a summary of the year’s story) for 2001 actually ended with Mata Nui awakening! No one could be sure if BIONICLE would be a big enough hit to last for more than one year …
The BIONICLE line was introduced with a comic book, truck tours, a “build your own website” contest, and, of course, the first six Toa canister sets. The six villager sets (who would later come to be called “Matoran”) were available only through a McDonald’s promotion.
As the Toa were originally planned, they were all different ages and they would all sound sort of “godlike” when they spoke. I had a long conversation with story team head Bob Thompson as I worked on the first comic, and suggested that the characters might be easier to relate to if they had different personalities, and spoke differently from each other, rather than all sounding like Thor or Superman. He agreed, and that was how the initial characters were born in print.
We did three issues of the comic in 2001 in the US and Canada (only one in Europe, I believe). The original plan was to have issue #3 lead into a BIONICLE PC game, which would deal with the fight between the Toa and Makuta. But when the game was cancelled (when it was decided it did not measure up to LEGO standards), the battle ended up being reflected only on BIONICLE.com, and the first issue of the next year started the Bohrok storyline.
More to come!
Cool. I am glad they didn’t stick with Bone Heads.. My son loved the Bionicle PS2 game though he really wants something more like a MMORG (though he is too young for that
). Good idea about the voices changing. He likes the fact that each of the Toa has their own agendas… so that was a great hit. He has also been hoping for a Secret Agents comic with as much in it as Bionicle. Anyway keep up the good work.
Wow! “Bone-Heads of Voodoo Island” sounds like it would make a great story for TALES FROM THE CRYPT!
Great blog entry, Greg! I love learning all the behind-the-scenes stuff on BIONICLE!
Wow. That is just… wow. I am SO thankful that it got changed from Bone-Heads of Voodoo Island. I probably wouldn’t have gotten hooked on it if it had. that would explain, though, the early concept art that has been put on the internet, and, to a lesser degree, the early sets and story.
I am happy about what BIONICLE has turned into, and I am also very glad that even though the sets are ending, the story isn’t. I really like knowing more about how BIONICLE actually started.