No, we can blame Grumman for this one. Although I kind of helped.

Back to the original topic, I'm reminded of when LEGO had to change some of the names of their Bionicle characters because the Maori objected to the use of their language in marketing.

Not gonna lie - I'm feeling a little hurt that you all derailed a thread without me.

Sorry, OrcishLibrarian. I didn't derail it so much as change the train's course, though.

Modern understanding of ancient scriptures is like a game of telephone that lasted millennia, except that the players spoke different languages, most of them were illiterate, a lot of them had agendas, and some of them wanted to burn the others at the stake. It's kinda depressing to think that our souls might depend on our understanding of this stuff.

You tried to re-rail it, frankly. Which makes you the better man.

I wasn't aware of that; Bionicle was a fairly prominent part of my extended childhood, but I never knew they had to change names. Was it a Toa or an [insert enemy species] or an island or something else? And was it, like, almost as soon as the set came out, or after it had been out for some time?

A short while after it was released, actually. Some time around 2001.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bionicle#M ... ontroversy

Man, I always had respect for the Bionicle franchise for being very visually ambitious. Also releasing a soundtrack of surprisingly boss techno tracks by big name artists.
It's a real shame had far it slid down, but those original shorts displaying the original Toa were really cool.
... I'm somewhat reminded both of Myst and Dinotopia. I think it's just something about the lost civilization sort of aesthetic.

Might???

Come now. . .

Anyway, I think it's more fascinating than anything. I love biblical history. That **** is whack.

The real question here is why aren't the fundamentalists up in arms about YOU?


The Bionicle game on the Lego website was legitimately great, and my first introduction, now that I think about it, to the whole adventure game format.

I never knew about this controversy though. That's interesting. I don't really know what to make of it exactly, on so little information...

Bionicle was pretty sweet. The wiki article made it sound like the Maori were more angry about Lego copyrighting Maori words than using them. Although apparently some people were still angry? I don't know.

Secret cults in the church hierarchies. The Vatican is rife with them.

I think one of the things I always liked about it was the entire "masks of power" thing. They managed to evoke a fairly primal tiki-esque culture while having this really slick science fiction aesthetic. It combined really really effectively to create something new.

Was that the point-and-click one? I remember getting completely stuck on the tree level because I couldn't figure out the riddle. Of course, I couldn't have been more than about 12 at the time...

Bioncle was pretty neat. I remember getting the series they had before bioncle that become bioncles, these neat little transformer type things. Some sort of motercycle something.

There were actually two pre-Bionicle sets that used the ball-and-socket shtick. The first were the Throwbots, which had these little frisbee discs you could load into their spring-arm and throw. They were actually a lot more varied in design than the Bionicle Toa typically were.

The second were that thing you said that I can't recall the name of; five or six motorcycle things that had spinning wheels adjustable gears. Also some unique body pieces.

I remember throw bots! The motercycle thing actually threw little discs too! That's was so advanced for the time.

The really unfortunate part was that they never innovated as much with the hero side of Bionicle and that very few of those first two iterations' parts were ever re-used. I used to use the throwbots' bodies and heads (both types of bodies) all the time on my own creations (I played with my Bionicles well into my teens [it's probably only been like 5 or 6 years since I stopped playing with them {I had to stop mostly because too many sockets had broken over the years <although I always enjoyed the building more than the playing/posing>}]).

Also, I just had the weird realization that we're now talking about Bionicle and Lego in the thread about cultural sensitivity...

You can thank me for that.

We don't stay on topic. That's not a thing.

I never really followed bioncle other than comercials, cause I think I was already a teen when it came out.