troll blogger gets owned

PRESENTATION

The front of the box, as usual, shows Pohatu, the Skull Scorpion, the Golden Mask, and the Lord of Skull Spiders skulking in the background. Pohatu’s pose is fairly uninspired (and bears only a slight coincidental resemblance to his G1 pose, though that could be because he no longer kicks) and his twister blocks a view of the neat elemental background that makes this box art so Bionicle in nature. This box art is also known for fooling innocent people into thinking Pohatu has trans yellow (he doesn’t).

The back features Pohatu into an even less inspired pose where he basically is just floating with his boomerangs strapped to his feet and his “dagger” in hand. Also shown is his promotional comic, his Actual Size image (FRUSTRATINGLY CLOSE TO ACTUAL SIZE), his power-up mode, and various infoboxes on his features.

Notably, his comic shows his boomerangs on his feet folded up, as opposed to the bizarre official function.

PIECES

Pohatu comes with a disappointing dearth of pieces, at 66. That’s one fewer than his Protector, which, even accounting for the Protector’s studs, is pathetic.

Pohatu’s new/interesting pieces include:

the redesigned Kakama

his exclusive boomerang pieces

the Guurahk staff, back at it again

trans neon green bones

the new add-on

the new head and eyes

dark orange plates

Intriguing, yet underwhelming in its lack.

BUILD

Pohatu will snap together more easily than any of the other Toa. He’s boring after having built four of them already and provides absolutely nothing new or interesting.

OVERALL DESIGN

Pohatu is boring. That’s the biggest thing. Besides his asymmetry (which I am decidedly not a fan of), there is nothing, overall profile-wise, to set him apart from other Toa.

One new thing with Pohatu I can appreciate is his color; we haven’t seen much Dark Orange in constraction in ages. Might even have last been in 2003. I think this is an excellent compromise between the dark browns and the garish, un-stone-like Bright Orange. It’s a little washed out, however, by his plethora of silver. Metal colors reign supreme in the smaller three Toa, and I hate it. I would have loved the return of tan, but alas, it’s not to be.

Speaking of colors, I was actually rather intrigued when I saw images of Pohatu and thought he included trans yellow, which I thought would look quite interesting with the Dark Orange. Unfortunately, it was all a trick; his translucent color is trans neon green, which, while not as ugly as I first thought, does not look as nice as trans yellow.

I’m really not feeling the white spikes on his arm (and apparently, the animators feel the same way; they’ve been completely omitted from his animation model). With no spikes anywhere else, they stick out terribly. I don’t even get what they have to do with stone.

Pohatu is right up there with Kopaka and Onua in the heavenly halls of mask recognizability. His mask is gorgeously similar to the original Kakama without being a straight-up transplant of it onto his face. If I had to criticize anything, it’d merely be that it feels a little too compact, though that could just be the added air intakes. Still, they’re nowhere near as intrusive on the design as Lewa’s.

Pohatu’s Adrenalin Mode, as mentioned above, is basically just strapping his boomerangs to his feet. It really isn’t working for me; the shape is weird, and it forces his feet waaaaaay apart. (It’s also difficult to remove the boomerangs from his feet without pulling the pin out of them, resulting in constantly having to reassemble them after pulling them off.)

However, I do think there’s a reason for this; this wasn’t originally supposed to be his adrenalin mode. My proof is the boomerang piece.

The boomerang piece has actually been designed to fold up completely, to form the foot things shown in both the animations and the promotional comic. The problem is, the Bohrok eye pieces on the end interfere with this, so they had to make a decision: abandon the Bohrok eyes, or give up on the folding-up foot attachment idea? They went with the latter, which means his boomerangs look more complete, but it also negatively impacts his Adrenalin Mode. I, personally, prefer the folded-up boomerangs; it makes a nice call-back to his 2001 incarnation.

Pohatu’s Power-Up Mode is pretty much just his Adrenalin Mode holding PoS’s staff, with his dagger rather perplexingly slapped on the end and one of PoS’s add-ons used as a gauntlet on his armored arm. It’s okay, I guess? Not the worst Power-Up Mode. It’s just kinda… there.

I don’t own Pohatu G1, so a comparison is sadly out of the question. One thing, though, is that it’s a darn shame Pohatu, who once broke the mold for the Toa, now has a conventional gear mechanism. I acknowledge it as a necessity, though; a leg gearbox would have looked terrible.

Like the other Toa, conflict in a box. Not much else to say, besides him having the only unique Skull Spider in that they added an extra leg piece to make it a Skull Scorpion. Certainly a better effort at one than the summer set.

CONCLUSION

Pohatu is easily the most boring of the Toa. He has no real defining features besides a couple that make him kinda ugly. However, if the worst I can say about him is he’s bland, then he’s already won over Lewa, so there’s that.