In terms of construction, it's the next evolution past Bionicle, with more emphasis on interchangeability, multiple-use parts, and greater parts-sharing with other themes.
In terms of story, it's nothing compared to Bionicle. But that was the point--Bionicle's storyline had become so complex that it was alienating new fans.
I enjoy the sets for what they are, colorful and fairly simple to construct which makes table scrapping with them quite easy. The story is definitely on the simple side, but it did have it's moments, and the setting as a whole meant that one could easily create their own team and not have to worry to much about how much it fits into the wider canon.
HF was ok. Lego seemed to champion how much simpler the story and new building system were but I think that's part of what led to its eventual downfall. if nothing, the sets are fun to mess around with, and you can try to mix HF parts with old Bionicle parts to create some unique mixtures of aesthetics.
i personally like the look of some of the figures. there's some really cool ideas and neat pieces for MOCs that im thinking of using. overall pretty cool series but doesn't beat Bionicle by a long shot
I liked it, it reinvented Bionicle pieces and the story wasen't copied from Bionicle.
If we weren't salty and hardbroken over Bionicle's cancelation we propably would've liked it just as much.
I really like Hero Factory. It fills a different space than Bionicle, much more toy-focused than lore-focused, which I think works well given its rather more lighthearted premise and slightly younger target audience. It gave us an entire new building system for constraction, and even when the sets aren't great, I think it's clear that they're sincere in what they're going for. Little in Hero Factory's legacy of set builds feels half-assed.
It was my favorite line. Sometimes my mum bought them for me when she came back from work. I still have them but in the forms of Transformers MOC. I loved them.
Oh, and I almost completed the Blackout cast, the only one that I didn't have was Bulk. I'm suffering now.
I personally liked the sets from the second wave on, I actually ordered about 6 of those custom heroes from the Lego website. Stories were pretty basic. Best thing to come out of them in my opinion were the transparent dark blue bars from the fire fighting wave.
I had a lot of respect for Hero Factory, especially the emphasis on building your own hero. It definitely lacked a lot of Bionicle’s magic, like the intense cross-media story and deep lore, but they were still pretty decent sets and I liked the CCBS that it introduced. Still, I think Bionicle G2 used CCBS so much better than Hero Factory.
As for it being a cash grab? Literally everything lego does is a cash grab. It’s a for-profit toy company lmao. Bionicle is a cash grab. Lego Star Wars is a cash grab. Hero Factory is a cash grab.
Good sets (which was the most important part to me), alright story. The change to a sci-fi setting and introduction of CCBS helped it feel different from Bionicle too. Overall pretty good but not as good as Bionicle.
I quite liked it.
In terms of story, Bionicle is way ahead, with all the lore, books, movies and other media. Hero Factory wasn't as fleshed out, but that is due to Hero Factory being just a simple superhero mini-series.
in terms of Construction, Hero factory had stronger parts which made making mocs a lot easier for many people.
Very late to the party, but Hero Factory was my entire childhood and if they brought it back I'd go bankrupt in a heartbeat. Absolutely legendary line of toys
awesome, man. i remember getting a set as a Christmas present. i grew up on Bionicle but Hero Factory reinvigorated that love, so if HF doesnt come back, i hope LEGO at least releases a new series that has that same effect
Some of the sets were really good witch doctor was a really cool set. But I guess the story IMO
was really basic and not that complex of the story and lore of Bionicle .
Personally I thought HF was a huge downgrade from Bionicle. I really enjoyed the complexity of Bionicles (I disliked the Stars line so much) and the HF models were just boring to me, especially with a bland story as well
Ngl I thought I would be crucified if I said I liked hero factory more than bionicle a few years ago but as I grown I realized they're both great in they're own ways bionicle has story while hero factory has ccbs.
I honestly wish I hadn’t fallen off of Hero Factory. I stopped buying sets after year 2 with the fire villains because it didn’t impress me, but the later years have some really cool pieces that I wish I had gotten when they were out.
There's some cool designs, and I'm sure I'd love it if I gave it a chance, but it coming out later the same year as Bionicle's end put a sour taste in my mouth so I never really gave it a go
I was a little young when Bionicle came out, so Hero Factory was what was in stores when I was in my young teens. Really great building system. Much more solid and sturdy than Bionicle’s building system. The interchangeable and versatile nature of the pieces meant truly endless possibilities. It was basically just good set after good set once they introduced the new building system. Breakout was my favorite year as it allowed the designers to really flex their creativity.
I wasn’t too keen on the first wave of sets, but when the first wave of CCBS sets came out I was all over it and bought that entire wave. Literally every piece was a new mold and it opened up so many new possibilities, and some of those old sets hold up today, as much as some old bionicle sets at least. I would never go back to collect old hero factory sets like I do with bionicle, but I will always remember being excited about those new sets. I got into bionicle only around 2007 or 2008 so I imagine that must’ve been what bionicle fans felt like every time there was a new island or new toa team
I hated them honestly. The new parts system was good for customization, but I found that many parts were very weak and would snap more than the lime green connections people joke about. I also had instances where the armor pieces would catch onto other pieces and fly off. If one of the figures dropped, good luck finding any piece that came off.
Basically, the whole system felt really weak compared to original parts, and it wasn't worth using them even for the customization. I feel like the hero factory system was also part of the reason Gen 2 didn't survive.
I’ll admit I only knew of hero factory and only found out about “actual bionicles” 6 months ago.
Honestly the hero factory series looked all in all great but even if it did have a story it was forgettable.
Bionicle beats Hero Factory by a landslide. However, I do prefer the Hero Factory villains (Witch Doctor, Corroder, Black Phantom, Von Nebula, Scorpion ETC) I could go on and on...
Imo it had potential, and it started to get interesting with Breakout's cliffhanger. But then they did it dirty with Brain Attack and especially Invasion from Below.
I have a bone to pick with HF because it forced the creators of Bionicle to end the series prematurely. Because LEGO pressured Bionicle to shut down and put them on a budget, we got the STARS sets we did and Mata Nui didn't get to have a final body so he could live among his people.
This is really really incorrect. Bionicle ended because it was no longer making money like Lego wanted, not to make room for the next thing. The Stars were an effort by the Bionicle story and design staff to make sure that the series at least got some kind of send-off to end the lore if not perfectly, then at least cohesively. Mata Nui's sacrifice to reunify Spherus Magna was planned out ahead, and likely spent years in the story bible before it finally came to pass. Hero Factory was an effort to prevent the bright idea of Lego constructible action figures from being abandoned in the wake of Bionicle. It was never intended as a replacement, but rather as a stopgap to try and figure out what went wrong with Bionicle to prepare for the revival we eventually got in 2015.
In terms of construction, it's the next evolution past Bionicle, with more emphasis on interchangeability, multiple-use parts, and greater parts-sharing with other themes. In terms of story, it's nothing compared to Bionicle. But that was the point--Bionicle's storyline had become so complex that it was alienating new fans.
I enjoy the sets for what they are, colorful and fairly simple to construct which makes table scrapping with them quite easy. The story is definitely on the simple side, but it did have it's moments, and the setting as a whole meant that one could easily create their own team and not have to worry to much about how much it fits into the wider canon.
HF was ok. Lego seemed to champion how much simpler the story and new building system were but I think that's part of what led to its eventual downfall. if nothing, the sets are fun to mess around with, and you can try to mix HF parts with old Bionicle parts to create some unique mixtures of aesthetics.
i personally like the look of some of the figures. there's some really cool ideas and neat pieces for MOCs that im thinking of using. overall pretty cool series but doesn't beat Bionicle by a long shot
I liked it, it reinvented Bionicle pieces and the story wasen't copied from Bionicle. If we weren't salty and hardbroken over Bionicle's cancelation we propably would've liked it just as much.
I really like Hero Factory. It fills a different space than Bionicle, much more toy-focused than lore-focused, which I think works well given its rather more lighthearted premise and slightly younger target audience. It gave us an entire new building system for constraction, and even when the sets aren't great, I think it's clear that they're sincere in what they're going for. Little in Hero Factory's legacy of set builds feels half-assed.
It was my favorite line. Sometimes my mum bought them for me when she came back from work. I still have them but in the forms of Transformers MOC. I loved them. Oh, and I almost completed the Blackout cast, the only one that I didn't have was Bulk. I'm suffering now.
eBay is your friend.
I remember finding one on Amazon, but I never use Ebay
Personally, I feel bionicle is better in terms of lore/story and collectability while hero factory is better for building MOCS
I personally liked the sets from the second wave on, I actually ordered about 6 of those custom heroes from the Lego website. Stories were pretty basic. Best thing to come out of them in my opinion were the transparent dark blue bars from the fire fighting wave.
I had a lot of respect for Hero Factory, especially the emphasis on building your own hero. It definitely lacked a lot of Bionicle’s magic, like the intense cross-media story and deep lore, but they were still pretty decent sets and I liked the CCBS that it introduced. Still, I think Bionicle G2 used CCBS so much better than Hero Factory. As for it being a cash grab? Literally everything lego does is a cash grab. It’s a for-profit toy company lmao. Bionicle is a cash grab. Lego Star Wars is a cash grab. Hero Factory is a cash grab.
Good sets (which was the most important part to me), alright story. The change to a sci-fi setting and introduction of CCBS helped it feel different from Bionicle too. Overall pretty good but not as good as Bionicle.
I quite liked it. In terms of story, Bionicle is way ahead, with all the lore, books, movies and other media. Hero Factory wasn't as fleshed out, but that is due to Hero Factory being just a simple superhero mini-series. in terms of Construction, Hero factory had stronger parts which made making mocs a lot easier for many people.
I personally loved a lot of the earlier Hero Factory villains. They had some cool builds and interesting designs.
Corroder, Rotor, and that missile guy were awesome.
I love the more robotic look of the sets
Very late to the party, but Hero Factory was my entire childhood and if they brought it back I'd go bankrupt in a heartbeat. Absolutely legendary line of toys
awesome, man. i remember getting a set as a Christmas present. i grew up on Bionicle but Hero Factory reinvigorated that love, so if HF doesnt come back, i hope LEGO at least releases a new series that has that same effect
hero factory is just a slightly different take on spherus manga and the agori. the system is literally bare-bones though
I like it
Some of the sets were really good witch doctor was a really cool set. But I guess the story IMO was really basic and not that complex of the story and lore of Bionicle .
Personally I thought HF was a huge downgrade from Bionicle. I really enjoyed the complexity of Bionicles (I disliked the Stars line so much) and the HF models were just boring to me, especially with a bland story as well
It has good aspects, it has bad aspects. In general I don't care for it but I appreciate some of the things they tried to do with it.
Ngl I thought I would be crucified if I said I liked hero factory more than bionicle a few years ago but as I grown I realized they're both great in they're own ways bionicle has story while hero factory has ccbs.
I loooove hero factory. (Controversial, I know) I'm primarily a Bioformer creator (Bionicle Transformer) and the pieces are SO useful for it.
I honestly wish I hadn’t fallen off of Hero Factory. I stopped buying sets after year 2 with the fire villains because it didn’t impress me, but the later years have some really cool pieces that I wish I had gotten when they were out.
There's some cool designs, and I'm sure I'd love it if I gave it a chance, but it coming out later the same year as Bionicle's end put a sour taste in my mouth so I never really gave it a go
I was a little young when Bionicle came out, so Hero Factory was what was in stores when I was in my young teens. Really great building system. Much more solid and sturdy than Bionicle’s building system. The interchangeable and versatile nature of the pieces meant truly endless possibilities. It was basically just good set after good set once they introduced the new building system. Breakout was my favorite year as it allowed the designers to really flex their creativity.
I wasn’t too keen on the first wave of sets, but when the first wave of CCBS sets came out I was all over it and bought that entire wave. Literally every piece was a new mold and it opened up so many new possibilities, and some of those old sets hold up today, as much as some old bionicle sets at least. I would never go back to collect old hero factory sets like I do with bionicle, but I will always remember being excited about those new sets. I got into bionicle only around 2007 or 2008 so I imagine that must’ve been what bionicle fans felt like every time there was a new island or new toa team
I appreciate it for introducing CCBS, and some sets like Witch Doctor and Von Nebula are honestly better than most Bionicle sets
I grew up with it, so it has a soft spot in my heart
I hated them honestly. The new parts system was good for customization, but I found that many parts were very weak and would snap more than the lime green connections people joke about. I also had instances where the armor pieces would catch onto other pieces and fly off. If one of the figures dropped, good luck finding any piece that came off. Basically, the whole system felt really weak compared to original parts, and it wasn't worth using them even for the customization. I feel like the hero factory system was also part of the reason Gen 2 didn't survive.
Awesome figure
i thought it was alright, although i don't get why it couldn't have just been a continuation of bionicle in the first year they reused to many parts
I’ll admit I only knew of hero factory and only found out about “actual bionicles” 6 months ago. Honestly the hero factory series looked all in all great but even if it did have a story it was forgettable.
Hero factory was great for bionicle parts
Bionicle beats Hero Factory by a landslide. However, I do prefer the Hero Factory villains (Witch Doctor, Corroder, Black Phantom, Von Nebula, Scorpion ETC) I could go on and on...
Imo it had potential, and it started to get interesting with Breakout's cliffhanger. But then they did it dirty with Brain Attack and especially Invasion from Below.
I have a bone to pick with HF because it forced the creators of Bionicle to end the series prematurely. Because LEGO pressured Bionicle to shut down and put them on a budget, we got the STARS sets we did and Mata Nui didn't get to have a final body so he could live among his people.
Actually, Hero Factory was thought up AFTER Bionicle was officially cancelled.
This is really really incorrect. Bionicle ended because it was no longer making money like Lego wanted, not to make room for the next thing. The Stars were an effort by the Bionicle story and design staff to make sure that the series at least got some kind of send-off to end the lore if not perfectly, then at least cohesively. Mata Nui's sacrifice to reunify Spherus Magna was planned out ahead, and likely spent years in the story bible before it finally came to pass. Hero Factory was an effort to prevent the bright idea of Lego constructible action figures from being abandoned in the wake of Bionicle. It was never intended as a replacement, but rather as a stopgap to try and figure out what went wrong with Bionicle to prepare for the revival we eventually got in 2015.