Towards the end of April, the Masterbuilder set will be released exclusively through LEGO® Direct, both on the website and in the S@H catalog. It will contain instructions for building 15 of the creatures seen in various sources like the MATA NUI game, the CCG, and the GBA game. One of those will be the USSAL (no word on the other 14) but unfortunately it will not be the uber-cool purple one that everyone wants. Instead, it will be blue and yellow, like PUKU, TAKUA’s mount.

Now here’s the tricky part. The reason it was cancelled in the first place is that it was believed that it wouldn’t sell very well. Given how much they underestimated how popular BIONICLE™ would be, I suspect this would sell better than a lot of sets on the shelves, but a lot of people will have a hard time buying them. However, when Bryan was showing me around the Toy Fair showroom, he commented on the fact that the $200 Blockade Runner set from the Star Wars line is so popular that they are going to release it to the retail market. If these Masterbuilder sets are popular enough through the direct market, they might do the same thing with this set.