Packaging

Starting with the box, its a pretty big change for the BIONICLE® series. Every set in the 2015 series comes in one of three sizes of cardboard box, rather than a canister. Kopaka comes in the largest size as one of the more deluxe elemental masters.

If your just joining the fan community as a new BIONICLE fan, the series traditionally packed its primary heroes and villains in canisters that featured varying levels of interaction. I was surprised to see they were boxed rather than bagged liked the smaller Hero Factory sets.

I have to wonder if its purely for marketing, or if they were trying something friendlier for the environment. The boxes are neatly taped at the edges, but close securely. All the parts are bagged except for the absurdly large ones that are packed directly into the box but are too large to slip out.

If you cut all four pieces of tape, and carefully pry the locking tabs out, you can unfold the box and flatten it without tearing the cardboard, so if your the rare collector who plans to keep the cardboard, you can pack the entire set in roughly the space of a couple good sized books. It appears the LEGO® Company actually outsourced the box design, if that Gbox logo I discovered upon opening the underside is any clue. I have to give them credit, the box design is neat. Ill miss the reusable canisters, but I’m happy I wont be as tempted to keep cardboard around, and I’m sure this drives the price down.

KOPAKA! ^_^

Ill have details on individual parts of interest later in the review, so for the moment I’m skipping right to finished Kopaka. Before I begin, I do need to point out that this is my personal Kopaka set, and since I had to pay out of my own pocket for him, he will not be pictured with the appropriate stickers per my personal preference. He is one of two elemental masters that uses stickers, (Onua being the other) and the stickers are applied to his upper leg armor.

Once you have put the model together, you will have Kopaka, a Skullspider to act as an opponent, and a gold version of his mask to act as his goal(and three or four loose spare parts). In the new story, he has been readapted into a sort of chivalrous knight character, and humanized a bit by being made clumsy, and “I Didn’t Slip” is quickly turning into the new BIONICLE®s’s first meme. Before, he was comparable to Batman when he wasn’t feeling social.

As for his color scheme, you cant help but notice the gold mixed in, this is to make his golden mask variant less of an eye sore when worn. The trans blue parts symbolic of his ice element are a nice touch, though he is the only elemental master with tans blue hands, and I’m not sure it looks right. I’m more than happy to have the skeleton parts in alternative colors, but I wish they did the upper arms in the same colors.

Functionality And Play

One of his more interesting features, one that each elemental master has a variation of, is a gear box module you assemble and attach his arms onto, which allows you to raise and lower his right arm which carries the spear/lance. Does anyone remember accidentally pulling the arm out of one of their toa? The designers took this into consideration, and you will notice a rim that holds onto the cogs. When the gearbox has been assembled and the arms attached, should you pull it all the way out the yellow cog will hold it against the rim and prevent it from falling out, and makes it easier to reattach the arm.

The gears on his right arm (left as we looking at him) are intended to create friction to stop the arm where you leave it by turning a blue peg on the second gear, so you can leave the arm posed without it flopping back down. It’s intent is to keep the figure fully articulated but to allow it the gear function at the same time.

Not even an hour of play will pass before that blue peg is too worn to hold up to the effects of leverage and gravity, but if you angle the spear back toward Kopaka, it retains enough grip to hold the arm in place. Any time you aim the lance outward though, its going to keep swinging back down, so no leaving him posed in attack mode.

Some of the others, like Gali, use four gears to create two friction points to fight the power of leverage, while Onua uses a ball joint in a socket that is so absurdly effective you wonder if its worth the energy to swing his arms around. If you don’t mind modifying the set and have some extra parts, you can swap the gears for a ball and socket with only some sacrifice to the shoulder pad’s articulation.

Another complaint about the mechanism is that his shoulder pads do limit the arm’s range of motion, so you will have to adjust it when your playing with it, unlike some of the sets like Tahu, who’s shoulder armor is attached to the moving arms.

The cogs they used instead of gears have a few advantages, besides not falling out if the arm pin is removed, the arms cant get misaligned or grind as easily, and they are easier for kids to work with. They aren’t as comfortable to turn the mechanism with compared to something round, but if you put your fingers between two of the prongs, it works alright.

Another point of interest is the new skull. Pressing down on it will push the other end up and launch the mask off of Kopaka’s face. I find it annoying since the mask is getting bumped off often enough without it. The skullspider mask however, isn’t keen on being knocked off, and hangs on with noticeable strength. For an adult trying to keep track of their kid’s toys, you may want to make sure these never leave the house.

The original skulls were designed to hold the masks in a way they could be knocked off as well, but the masks had a single stud that plugged into the mouth to attach. I think they actually held on better than these masks do, up until they switched over to a plus connector when they phased the mask battle feature out. The new masks actually feel more mask-like as a side benefit of being connected over the ears.

The new head and mask system is also streamlined, though incompatible with any of the previous masks. The masks are designed to be knocked off as a battle game, much like the original six Toa, and attach by two rounded bumps on extended tabs which grab onto the ears of the skull. I’ve worried about breaking them, but they seem sturdy enough. In addition to having the mask ejector, the skull also has funneling grooves designed to assist in attaching the mask. Its actually very easy to pop the mask on as a result, and they have a satisfying click.

That’s not the only trick up his sleeve though, Kopaka is modeled after his Toa Nuva incarnation, and has extra functionality in his shield. If you noticed the bolts sticking out, those go into his feet to form skis, though nothing will stop you from clicking them together to make a snowboard, as the tools are the same in the new Tahu set and he uses them as a lava board. With the right parts you can make them into ice skates, but that would look a bit absurd. If you have four bolts with the single stud on the other side, you can swap those in place of the black ones that are kind of an eye sore, and they work just as good for me.

Each of the January BIONICLE sets come with a Skull Spider, except for the Lord of Skull Spiders but he or she IS a spider. I think of it as a mask with legs, though technically for the story its a spider that latches onto people to control them. The legs are actually new and compliment the character well, not because they look spidery but because they are excellent at hanging from things, and the position they attach to on the mask, intentional or otherwise, further improve the range of things they can grab.

The only major complaint I have involves the mini comics on the boxes and instructions, as the tabs that let the character wear the spider get in the way of grabbing directly on over a character’s existing mask, but the comics depict them grabbing on, and getting knocked off of, the characters mask.

Surely the one spider doesn’t seem very menacing on its own compared to the might of Kopaka, but the comics give you the idea that these things are sneaky, waiting for a distraction to latch onto you. Of course they are always attacking in groups, but only one comes in the set. If your like myself and bought every elemental master and protector on the other hand, you will have no less than 12 Skull Spiders (Well 10 and two Skull Scorpions)

Once Kopaka has secured his prize, it poses the problem of how to store the mask he isn’t wearing. I’m still experimenting, but there are a number of parts you can hang it on besides the specific skull. In particular the mask can rest on the yellow cog on his back when not being played with.

Construction And Parts Of Interest

The construction itself is straightforward, build the skeleton, pop on the armor, build the gearbox and attach it to the body, then pop the arms and head on. An oddity to the construction though is the use of a couple stud bolts. One is used to attach the armor adapter on the back, when a second normal bolt would have been acceptable. Maybe its was used because sometimes attaching something over two bolts at once is tricky, and the longer bolt perhaps guilds it onto the stud, making it easier for younger builders. Another on is attached just below the neck joint on the main body. As far as I can tell it doesn’t do anything, maybe its there to act as a spare, but then the set comes with a spare as it is, just not attached to Kopaka.

These are all the parts he comes with, the first picture showing the manual, loose packed swords and sealed small and large parts bages. The second and third pictures show the contents of the parts bags, with the large parts including the loose packed swords. Anything I found interesting that did not get covered in the review above will be listed below

The swords are HUGE, one alone is taller than the original Kopaka. They are based on Toa Lhikan’s shield, except these don’t need a third part to hold them together because the teeth kind of click together. The big empty gap gives plenty of room to customize the sword for MOCs, though Tahu’s come in silver which doesn’t limit your color palate as much. The swords have more flex in certain spots than I like, and one of mine even has an annoying curve that make clicking them together harder.

Two of these fill in the gap on the sword, and complete the icy look. The third makes the spear/lance look slightly less lame

For some reason I like these, they are mostly used to attach Hero Factory armor to technic beams, but I think in the right hands they will be incredibly helpful, especially when it comes to making new weight supports for larger MOCs

Five of the elemental masters have these chest plates with a preprinted image, Onua being the exception with his gigantic armor plate that uses stickers. I don’t know if the patterns are unique to these sets or if they were barrowed from Legend Of Chiima or something, but each one seems to be unique among the 2015 line and may pose some significance in the story. This one comes in gold like Tahu’s, the others come in the grey/gunmetal and brown, but with colors appropriate to their wearer.

These are the rest of the gold parts, including these he has the second largest number of gold parts next to Tahu

These are all the transparent elements, for those of you who are looking to MOC with them like I am. I’ve been planning to make an entirely transparent character, and I built a MOC to represent a character of Baxor’s a while back with similar interests in mind. I hope to make a new one or improve the existing MOC with some of these parts.

These parts seem to be designed with the old BIONICLE style in mind, and they contribute greatly to the overall appearance.

*Hisssssss*

The final notable part are these size five piston rods. I call them piston rods because they have the cap to prevent the ball joints from falling off so they can be used with the piston tube that reinforces the weight support on a number of older BIONICLE sets. In any size these make custom characters much easier since you can built a unique body around them easier than other prefabricated parts. I was ecstatic to discover the existence of size 4 rods years ago, and this is just one more size to work with that can mean all the difference for some MOCs.

Final word

There is room for improvement, all new molds to replace the standard HF components would have improved him greatly, and the few new pieces that were added demonstrate this. The fact the new pieces are in the BIONICLE style also indicates the possibility that these are a transition from Hero Factory to an updated BIONICLE system, similar to what they did when they first launched HF and transitioned to this very system. It would also help set these two similar themes and characters apart, but then perhaps that’s why HF switched to minifig scale, and The LEGO Company has been refreshing HF for years with these same minor part additions, so maybe I’m reading too much into the new part designs.

I feel like I’m enjoying Kopaka more than I should, and I don’t know why. I’ve grown to hate the streamlined look of the standard Hero Factory elements. Sure it was great when it first came out but its been overused with little innovation, and makes up most of the new BIONICLE® sets. Somehow, what should be a major detraction to the set is not bothering me as much as I expected.