Big Blocks of Text

Things have been rough for me for far too long. The family fought a lot, I didn’t have friends at school, six year old me got bullied constantly and I couldn’t help but get depressed. Year after year things kept getting worse, the depression rooting itself deeper and deeper into my head.

But there was always Bionicle.

In the late 90s and early 2000s, money was extremely tight in the family. We were constantly straddling the line between the lower and middle class. We had the necessities for a fairly comfortable life, but not much spending money. Lego was always a toy I wanted to get into, and it was something my mother always wanted to get for me. Problem was, the sets we could afford generally weren’t all that good, and the sets that looked amazing were far too expensive.

In 2001, though, my mother brought me to ToysRUs and showed me this wall of Bionicle sets, and she just said “Pick one”. It was such a fantastic moment! This entire wall of awesome looking Lego robot dudes, and I could have any one I want?! We’ve never had that opportunity before, it was amazing. Took me far too long to finally decide on one to take home with me.

That one blue canister set quickly spiralled into a huge collection. The next year I discovered the comics thanks to a free Lego Club subscription voucher that we mailed in, and I got hooked on the story. The year after, I got the first chapter book, and I just needed more. I followed the story religiously ever since.

I never really did get friends. The family never did stop fighting. The depression just kept getting worse, by the time I was 10 years old I was having sucidal thoughts what seemed like every other minute.

But there was always Bionicle.

Those canister sets were just so cool to kid me. I couldn’t accept any other substitute, and since we could always afford to get one or two every couple of months I didn’t have to. Every set to look forward to had an equally unique story to go with it. That story captured my imagination like no other, I couldn’t get enough.

There was always Bionicle to look forward to. New sets, new stories, new games, new creations to make. Every thought of ending it all was pushed back by the joy this line brought me, and the anticipation for what comes next was always a reason to get out of bed the next day.

Despite the family fighting, despite going to a different school every year hoping to finally make friends only to wind up feeling alone and unloved, despite bad counselors insulting me to my face, despite a bloodthirsty school district wanting to ruin my future, despite locking myself up in a one bedroom apartment for ten straight years

There was always Bionicle. That one ray of sunshine, that one source of joy, was always there.

Thirteen years later, things are starting to look up. I’ve made significant strides in breaking free from this crippling anxiety and depression, I’m finally making my first steps into adult life.

I still feel alone, I’m still lost and scared, but I’ve finally found some semblance of a direction to move in. Had my life gone the same, but that one joy been absent, I wouldn’t be here to say that.

I want anybody and everybody that worked on anything related to Bionicle to read this, and for them to hear from the bottom of my heart

Thank you.

From the people that worked on one quick piece of marketing, to the well-known folks with a hand in everything

to the executives that greenlit and oversaw the project, to the people that just made an offhand suggestion to a set designer one time

everybody inbetween, everybody higher and lower, no matter the size and scope of their contribution

every single one of you

Well, to start, no it’s not ironic. I do unironically enjoy Galidor. This ain’t a meme. Sorry to disappoint those of ya’ that may have been hoping for that.

Something that I have been saying for years is, “Galidor is a good product. Just not a good Lego product.” I always thought the constructable action figure idea was great and even though it was done better through the likes of Bionicle and Hero Factory, I thought that what Galidor brought to the table was a worthwhile product in the toy market.

I also like to know as much as I can about things that I enjoy, and I like to share that information with people. When I’d see people joke about “Galidor G2 when” a few years back, I would hop in with what I thought to be the truth based on what I knew.

“Oh, that’s because Galidor isn’t a Lego IP! They’re tie-in toys for the show!”

Then I bought a copy of Brick by Brick by David C. Robertson three years ago, and, well, it had a particular passage on Galidor that I made a post about

Despite the joke, I was infuriated. This book had been out for over a year at that point, and yet any other source of information, regardless of the source’s reliability, would tell you something what was 100% incorrect. Not only that, but I had been spreading false information about something that I had enjoyed, that only lead to furthering negative feelings towards a company whose products I enjoy!

This kickstarted an obsession. I started spending unhealthy amounts of time scouring the internet for every single little tidbit of information about the line. Interviews, press releases, behind the scenes photos, forum posts, everything I could find that had something that was even slightly relevant I memorized and saved to an external hard drive just to be sure. I didn’t want blatantly false information to be rooted in history as the truth.

The interviews that I found with Matthew Ewald, the actor for Nick Bluetooth on the show, were particularly interesting to me. This man was, and still is, in love with Galidor. It was the type of show made him want to be an actor in the first place, it was never “just a dumb kids show” to him. I was shocked to learn just how dedicated he was to Galidor and all the projects he’s a part of.

Caring more about doing the project justice, supporting his family, and inspiring the viewers than he did about the money. That inspired me, and when I went to show these interviews with other people, always the first response was to... laugh?

People skimmed through, people laughed, people said “That’s so sad!! XD” in response to seeing a passionate man go on about how inspiring others was more important to him than the money. All because it was Galidor instead of Bionicle or Ninjago. I don’t think that’s right.

In these interviews and other bits of information I found that while Galidor was a financial failure in terms of toy sales, it wasn’t a complete and utter failure. The show was a success. As in, the ratings were good, kids quickly became dedicated fans that followed it closely, and fan forums were made. There was a BZPower equivalent for the Galidor show. A one-stop shop for Galidor news and fan discussion. But this all just wasn’t enough to make up for the massive amounts of money spent on the franchise.

The toys being released alongside Bionicle’s peak in popularity pretty much single handedly killed any chance of Galidor being a financial success, and since the line was around for so short of a time people quickly moved on and forgot. You won’t find the fan forum, it’s long gone. You’ll see people occasionally pop up with memories of that one thing they thought was a fever dream but was actually real.

Despite being a huge financial failure, this line still took ahold of many kids’ creativity and inspired them. It makes me wonder.

Why should sales figures decide whether or not that’s a good thing? Why should sales figures decide whether or not the memory of kids having harmless fun is a positive or negative thing?

Whether you’re looking at the show or the toys from the most critical point of view, I guarantee you that you will find things that are objectively worse in every way that were huge successes that many people and even you might remember fondly. If those can be remembered fondly, why not things that failed?

I like to keep in touch with my inner child. I know what I liked as a kid and why I liked the things I did, and when I experience something that kid-me would just absolutely adore it brings out a wonderful feeling of childish joy. The Galidor show brought me that when I first watched through it a few years back, and the toys bring me that whenever I make something with them.

And you know what? I don’t even like Galidor that much.

I enjoy it, I’ve gone to great lengths to preserving every little detail about it that I can, but it’s not something that I totally absolutely love with every ounce of my being.

To me, the biggest failures are just as important, if not moreso, than the biggest successes. Not to hold it up on a pedestal of “the worstest things ever and nothing ever like it should ever be done ever”, but to look at where things went wrong and ask “What can we do better?”, “Would that marketing idea work better for something else?”, “If we changed the core product to something else, would it have done better?”

Imagine if the mere idea of Lego TV shows were forever written off as something that should never be done solely because of Galidor. Or maybe if all sci-fi lines that aren’t Lego Star Wars were forever canned. I believe that kind of thinking just doesn’t lead to the kind of progress that every company needs.

I want someone, somewhere, to be able to look at this financial failure and turn it into a success that inspires kids everywhere. Outside of the business realm, which I admittedly know very little about, I just think that there are legitimately good things about Galidor.

I don’t want to change people’s opinions from “Galidor is the worst” to “Galidor is the best”, I just want to share a different perspective and the joy I find in it. I want people to remember them having harmless fun with toys and shows as a child and feel nostalgia regardless of sales statistics.

I want to show you the things that I think are good about it, I want to share with you that childish joy that it brings out in me, and if you read through this post, looked at some things that I’ve shared, and think “That’s nice, Julius, but I still think it’s all hot garbage” then I appreciate you taking the time to listen at the very least.

Oh man where do I even begin.

Back when I was a kid, I was taken to a wide variety of churches to find a place of spirituality where we’d fit in and feel comfortable with ourselves. After a while we decided to forego churches entirely and turned to the New-Age crowd.

We found one particular store in our area and stuck with it for the longest time. They had tarot cards, fragrant oils, incense, books on everything metaphysical, and a whole lotta crystals. Those crystals were the main reason why I liked going to the stores for so long.

While we went there, I ended up getting taught all sorts of interesting stuff. Everything from basic tarot card readings, to becoming a beginner Reiki healer, to what my “past lives” supposedly were. Oh boy, that’s where things get silly.

I’m not going to get into the details of that, let’s just skip straight to that book I mentioned! Enter 2007. The concept of “Indigo Kids” grew to include Crystal Kids and Star Kids, and the whole Mayan 2012 Apocalypse hype/panic was just coming down from its peak.

I was asked if I would like to be interviewed for a book to be written by Meg Blackburn Losey, Conversations With the Children of Now. Naturally, excited kid-me said yes. I was alone with the owner of the metaphysical shop and a video camera. She asked me questions, gave answers that I thought were the truth, and I got published in it along with a handful of other kids!

Look at that dorky little kid! My little introduction here is pretty short compared to a lot of the others in this book.

And as for those past lives, well... I’ll let the first few things I say in this book do all the talking.

I don’t know whether the editor knew I was talking about Bionicle and edited some of the names to avoid legal trouble, or if the writer just changed some things to look a little cooler, or maybe a bit of both, but here it is. Montanui is supposed to be Mata Nui, Voyganui is supposed to be Voya Nui, and Toah isn’t supposed to have an ‘h’ at the end.

Needless to say I had a very active imagination, which was further enabled by several “past life regression” sessions.

At first I felt real good about the whole thing. Hell, after the book got released, I was asked by another kid to autograph his copy! That was neat. But as time went on I kept looking back at my copy with more and more disdain. First with thoughts of “Why can’t I just be normal,” then with thoughts of “That stuff was complete bullshit”

Now it’s April 3rd, 2017. My 22nd birthday, 10 years after the interview. I don’t feel too negatively towards the whole thing. Aside from obvious embarrassment from stupid kid me, I don’t regret anything.

Those delusions of once being a great biomechanical warrior, among other things, got carried away, but the belief of being a part of something more grand helped carry me through the worst times in my life, which would hit just a year after the interview.

I think the best place to start would be to answer the question “What is Tron: Ghost in the Machine?” for those who haven’t read it. The answer to that is pretty simple. It’s a six-issue absolute mindfuck of a comic series and I love it.

One of the biggest problems with it, though, is the fact that you really have to read every issue to fully understand what’s going on. Why is that an issue? Simply because the subject matter makes a lot of people just give up a couple of issues in.

This is where it gets spoiler-laden, so look away if you’re interested in these comics and don’t want to be spoiled.

One of the most absurd responses to it I’ve seen was something along the lines of “It tries too hard to be The Matrix and every character is out of character.” If you’ve read Ghost in the Machine, you’ll know why that’s absurd right off the bat. None of the characters that you see in Ghost in the Machine are actually the same characters from their respective Tron story installments.

Neither Blue, Red, or Green Jet, or any fusion of them, is actually Jet Bradley. The three are fragments of a backup of Jet Bradley. Moreover, every character you see is actually a creation of Blue, Red, or Green Jet, as is literally everything that you see happen in the comic.

I can see why it would be really off-putting to some Tron fans, because this really is used an excuse to have some absolutely morbid things happen. Even if they didn’t really happen in the context of the story, they were still drawn and not everyone is keen on the idea of seeing Alan Bradley shout “MY WIFE IS DEAD!” and get shot in the face.

But what I like most about Ghost in the Machine, and this is what made me love the 1982 film, is that it was really made to provoke thought in the viewer. That may sound pretentious, but it’s pretty much straight-up said in the Afterword of the Graphic Novel.

That being said, it doesn’t do too bad of a job on the surface-level story, either. I’d say it’s really hit-or-miss depending on who reads it, but I really liked what they did with this. I’ve been thinking about the “tries too hard to be The Matrix” comment for a long while now, and I just don’t get it. Maybe it’s because I watched Reloaded and Revelations before watching the original film? I dunno, but it seems like a pretty silly claim to make.

Anyways, I really enjoyed that they tackled the idea of “What if someone made a backup of the data of a digitized user, and what if something went wrong in the compiling of that data?” That’s a really interesting story idea, and the best part is that it can be taken in a multitude of different directions. And you know  what? I’d love to see those different directions. That’s one of the best things about Tron in general; you can take so many of its story premises in so many different directions.

Back when I was an active lurker on BZPower under the name Toa_Takanuva, I followed the various GregF answers topics almost religiously. I remember someone posting a response they got from Greg about Vakama’s visions, among other things. The explanation at the time was something along the lines of “It was a glitch in his A.I. that just happened to be useful.” Now, memory isn’t always correct, but let’s just assume that it is so I can give you the block of text that I promised, mmkay?

See why I say “thankfully”? It’s a really anti-climactic answer, and since Bionicle is a fusion of sci-fi and fantasy there’s really no need to give a rational explanation to something like that. Unexplainable mystical magical whatsits is a lot more fun than “it’s a fuckup that happened to help”. Well, at least I think it is. Your mileage may vary.

Pretty much every one of Greg’s answers to little things like that are made up on the spot. Because of that, Greg has a tendency to completely forget the answers that he gives pretty quickly. That’s why I followed the topics religiously. Every now and then someone else would come along and ask the exact same question that someone had asked before, and Greg would say something completely different in response.