The 21 Year Old Bohrok-Kal
I have a lot of Bionicle parts, but I weirdly don’t have that many Bionicle sets. Well, I kinda do, since I inherited all of my brother’s Bionicle sets. When we went our separate ways and brother moved in with his (genuinely charming) girlfriend, he didn’t have room for both his comic collection and his Bionicle collection. So I inherited it, aside from his absolute favourites. However, the Bionicle sets I own, they are almost ALL custom MOCs, things I’ve built myself. In fact, some of those MOCs are ancient – my Arkay MOC is at least 10 years old and has hardly changed, while my Phovos the Raptor MOC is nearly 17 years old, and retains a lot of its original features, like the classic Gahlok-Kal shield chest plate.
My oldest Bionicle though is my Tahnok-Kal and Gahlok-Kal sets. I got them in 2003, bought with my own pocket money, because my parents refused to buy me Bionicle sets. My brother had the Toa Nuva (including three Pohatu Nuvas for some reason) and I wanted them, but my desires reached a critical level when brother was given a Gahlok-Kal as a gift by our aunt and uncle. I NEEDED this awesome, head-butting robot that could roll into a ball, so I saved up my pocket money and bought my own. And then, a few months later, I bought some more. And after that, I finished the collection. By 2004, I had all 6 Bohrok-Kal and I adored them.
Amazingly, I still have them, although they’re not all in one piece. I mean, they are, but I’ve had to replace parts over the years. I nearly had a breakdown back in January because I bumped into my shelf and knocked Tahnok-Kal off it, making his limb snap off. I had a spare part to fix it, but I’ve had Tahnok-Kal for so long that I just felt awful. Now, so it doesn’t happen again, I keep my treasured Bohrok in their rolled up form
But the thing is, if it wasn’t for the Bohrok-Kal, I probably wouldn’t be here.
Okay, to be fair, I’ve stated something similar before. In a no longer recent article (fuck I wrote it back in 2020?), I discussed how a random Battle Bot set me on the path I’m on today. And back in 2016, I wrote about how the Bohrok-Kal were responsible for me joining BZPower and getting me interested in writing. But 2016 was a long time ago. Heck, it’s all a long time ago. The Daily SPUF itself is over 10 years old. But my beloved Bohrok-Kal are now 21 years old, so old that they can legally vote, drink, smoke and gamble on most countries on Earth. I would say that they can also have sex but they’re robots who don’t really understand the concept of reproduction.
I don’t know why, but, after all these years, I still have strong feelings for a wave of Bionicle sets that nearly got Bionicle cancelled because they sold badly. I mean, I can see why they sold badly, a year before, we got the normal Bohrok, so these guys were kinda just reskins, but no one complained about the Toa Nuva being the same but with some extra armour pieces, and, well, pretty much every Bioncle set up until 2007 was a bit of a clone. But in all honesty, the Bohrok-Kal gave us some of the best parts in a long time. At the very least, it gave us the Gahlok-Kal shield piece, which has been reused time and time again, both in MOCs and recoloured and used in official sets. I also get defensive of them lore-wise, because they died some pretty horrible deaths, especially considering that the Bohrok-Kal were intelligent, intelligent enough to see the de-powered Toa as being less of a threat and deciding that they didn’t want to kill the Toa.
On top of that, these sets, hated by most people, kick-started my imagination in a different way. I started drawing more things. I started writing more things. I started designing my own creatures. Sure, I was kinda already doing that with the battle bots, but something about this team of unwanted bad guys with big, pretty eyes and honestly pretty cute powers (like headbutting things and folding up into a ball) just… changed me.
Either way, it’s been 21 years since the Bohrok-Kal were released, and the Bohrok-Kal I now keep on a shelf in my bedroom are nearly 21 themselves. It’s just… kinda mind-boggling that they’re still there and they still make me happy. So I am thankful for that.
Thank you, you weird, unwanted, kinda crappy, rather brief Bionicle bad guys. Thank you, Bohrok-Kal.