For our European readers, January 2001 marks the official release of the very first BIONICLE sets (although some seem to say the series launched late December 2000 over there). I feel like it would be a huge oversight not to make mention of this. For those of us in the United States, we had to wait until summertime to get ours.

My first glimpse into BIONICLE was this Onua teaser shown in the LEGO Magazine. It was also Vahkiti’s first look, as it turns out. When I asked him if he had it on hand to use in the article, it was not 60 even seconds later that he returned with it on our communications page, having taken special care to archive it for his own sentimental value. He even took the time to upscale it for this post.

Some months later, BIONICLE had launched in the United States, but I had more or less sworn off buying LEGO products. I was very interested in the figures and mask collection, but just couldn’t bring myself to get them. I was still mad at The LEGO Company after their mall demonstration of the Mindstorms RCX. I enjoyed seeing the demo, but I knew programming was not my thing, and made a point of telling my parents not to buy me the kit. However, it had enthralled my parents with the idea I would build some grand mechanism with one, so they got it for me anyway.

To this day, I still have the RCX, and the only program I ever got to work correctly was “Port C on”, so I could use its light brick as a flashlight in a pinch. This led to me hating the toy because it was a 300 dollar brick (the bad kind) that wasted my parent’s money when they could have bought me a cheaper LEGO set I would have enjoyed more.

My plans were later thwarted when I got Kopaka as a Christmas gift. I quickly got into mask collecting, joined the MaskOfDestiny community (then run by Purple Dave and Mark Of MoD), and 19 years later I’m working for the site and trying my best to adhere to The LEGO Group’s fair use policies.

How did that happen @_@