Over the past year we have posted hundreds of articles, and for most of that year we have tried to make sure that we had something new for our readers every day. Still, some of those articles hold special meaning to me, so I’m highlighting them today.

The first one was when TAHU showed up on the cover of ToyFare magazine . If you collect any non-LEGO® toy line, this is one of the top magazines in the business. I’ve collected it since the beginning, but I don’t recall any other LEGO® line being showcased in this magazine before. This was probably the first real indication of how big BIONICLE™ was going to become.

Next, obviously, would be debut of EVIL TAHU . He’s posed for a lot of photos over the last year, including a horde of various TOA weapon mounts, the BIONICLE™ watch, the EXO-TOA (both at Toy Fair and when I got my own set), my prototype yellow HAU, and a variety of others that I won’t list here. Ironically, I never went back and reshot good photos of him without some sort of other item…

And, of course, TURAGA NUI . This was probably the first article that really gave MoD a big boost. I actually still get e-mail about this on a semi-regular basis. I also ended up learning how to use my then-new digital camera on the revised instructions .

ONUA KINO , POHATU KINO , GALI KINO , and LEWA KINO put a solid start on my TOA KINO series. I do still plan to produce KOPAKA KINO and TAHU KINO, but while I have the bodies basically done, I still need to paint AKAKU KINO and HAU KINO before I can post images. I do not intend to let another year go by without finishing this series, though I have no intentions of doing a TOA NUVA KINO series.

ONEPU . If you have to ask why, you just don’t understand…

MAIA . I don’t think I could ever bear to build a second copy of her for myself. If you have to ask why, I doubt you’ll ever understand…

KAIKOKOTI and MUHA are here not so much because of themselves, but because I think I’m going to try to post an appropriately-themed MOC every Halloween. I’ve already got a few things in mind for this year…

Free stuff is never a bad thing. Especially two months early.

Mr. EVIL TAHU goes to Toy Fair . If I had been told in May 2001 that I would get to attend Toy Fair, you couldn’t have paid me to believe you. I got to hang out with some of my college friends for the first time in about three and a half years, I got to strap EVIL TAHU into the EXO-TOA a whopping five months before it would show up on store shelves, and I got to meet a lot of really cool LEGO® people.

Okay, I doubt I’ll ever understand this. NOAOKE was something I threw together in one day as something of a joke (and partly to see if it was possible, but there are actually people who’ve told me that it’s my best MOC. Weird, huh?

I still feel that the Dragon of Fire is my best work so far. Part of that is due to the fact that I managed to use ten of the so-called “useless” THROWBOT™, ROBO RIDERS™, and BIONICLE™ parts that a lot of the mainstream LEGO® fans feel are overly specialized and can’t possibly be useful for building MOCs. Incidentally, I’m really interested in the idea of building the entire run of LEGENDS OF THE FIVE RINGS dragons, and I’ve actually already got the Void Dragon built, using nothing but black pieces for everything. I also finally finished the model that provided a thematic inspiration for the original Dragon.

And who could forget MATORAN Madness Month ? I certainly can’t. I lost a lot of sleep that month, but it was definitely worth it. Someday I’d like to have the entire series built at the same time.

Did I mention that free stuff is never a bad thing? Especially when you’ve got the first pics on the Internet.

Anyways, additional notes that didn’t really fit anywhere in that array of articles are that I’ve got an animal MOC built, I’ve almost finished a pair of MOCs inspired by the movie TRON , and I’ve got a few new TOA designed. I also signed up on BZC today, so I should (hopefully) be a little more accessable than before.