For those of you not in the know, this is the original Toa, Toa Tahu the fire dude. Yes, that is his official name. Fire dude. No, not really, but that would be pretty awesome! There are 6 Toa in every set; fire, water, ice, earth, air, and a black one. He is rock or some such, but I always found it funny that there was both earth AND rock, yet no plant. The green one was air. Cause, you know, air is totally green. 

Anyway, the guy in front is Tahu, the leader of the Toa and thus every kid's favorite. I liked Gali the best, but then again she was the only girl. Behind him is the last fire Toa from the most recent set. See the change in size? However, bigger doesn't equal better. The original Toa are far more poseable--I had to remove a piece from the new one'e leg to get him in that position. 

And here we have the first enemy of the Toa, the very ferocious Borak. Two of these are actually mine--the black and green ones, the red in the middle is one of the newer Boraks. You can tell cause of the fancy design on his faceplate. The Borak are definitely my favorite villains from the series. They got a bit creepy later on (Piraka, anyone?), but the Borak are kind of cute! I mean, they look like chickens and roll up into balls. You can also have them whack things with their heads as seen above, but that just makes them even more chicken like.  Plus their leader is a Queen, which makes them especially cool. Then again, most of the bad guys in Bionicle land have a female leader. Maybe the creator has a grudge against his ex wife? 

That fine lady in the middle is Gali, the water Toa. She is mine--I don't have many Bionicles but I have almost all of the versions of Gali. Her weapons got lost a long time ago, so sadly Gali is defenseless against all of those other dudes! Thankfully she has tiny water guy (you can tell I am very knowledgeable about Bionicles!) to help her out! She was one of the minis that came in Happy Meals way back when, and of course there are about 3 sets of them running around my house. 

The yellow guy is one of the Rahkshi, the bad guys that came after the Borak. Still pretty cool, but no chicken heads! I do love the double sided weapon, way better than whacking people with your skull. The one on the right is a custom my brother made for me several years ago, and he has a very special place in my collection. Some of his pieces are spray-painted and have chipped over time, but that only makes him look deconstructed and badass. He is surprisingly easy to pose, even though he looks a bit top-heavy. He also folds in half, and has wings! Yeah, that's right, you guys are all envious of my awesome Bionicle custom. 

And here is one of the newer Bionicle constructs. As you can see, they got a lot more complicated as the years went by. I mean, I can't even tell what this is. A bike? A monster? A weapon of mass destruction? In any case, it's pretty awesome. And it has a old school looking Toa in it, so bonus points for not using one of those huge crazy dudes! Also, huge props to my brother for actually figuring out how to build something this complicated--do you know how hard those instruction booklets are to read? 

And just to give you an idea of how massive my brother's collection is, here is his box of masks. That's right, the entire thing is just masks. It's about 6" deep--the masks that is, not the actual box. That's right, 6" of masks. There are probably ~150 in there, and very few are duplicates. 

And last but not least, here they are all together! Hanging out on my Gazelle, cause they are warriors and need to stay in shape. I had forgotten how much fun they are to play with before i took them out to pose, but man it was awesome! They are so easy to move around and put in awesome poses. It is rather sad that Lego decided to discontinue the line, and I am sure my brother will be heartbroken when we actually tell him. But thankfully there are hundreds of custom designs out there, and he can always come up with new Bionicles of his own. This was a truly awesome toy line, and hopefully one day they will decide to bring it back to life. ZOMBIE BIONICLES! 

I'd like to extend a huge thank you to my brother who built all these guys (aside from the ones that are mine) just for this photoshoot. He was super excited about having his toys online, so feel free to leave a comment for him and I will be sure to pass on the message. ^^ And don't forget that there are a bunch more pictures in the gallery, so go check them out!