Review: Bionicle 2015 Protectors

This week, we’ll be building the Protectors, which were released alongside the Masters during that initial January 2015 wave. The Protectors were the tribal leaders throughout the island of Okoto. Prior to the arrival of the Toa, the Protectors were presented with elemental masks by the Mask Maker Ekimu. A fight between Ekimu and Makuta, which we’ll talk about at another time, resulted in the masks being spread across the island. The Protectors located the masks and put them into shrines where they awaited for the arrival of the Toa. While their introduction certainly made them feel like Turaga duplicates, they absolutely aren’t. The Protectors are loaded up with powerful weapons to fight alongside the Toa in battle. Protector is a title that is passed down through generations along with the mask and weapons. They’re basically the Black Panther.

Packaging:

Just like the Masters, the Protectors come in cardboard prisms if you will, the front which are decorated with the Protectors in battle throughout the tribal regions of Okoto. The back of the boxes include a preview of the play functions, actual size images of the masks, and a preview of a combination model that can be built by combining the Masters and Protectors for each region. We’ll get to them next week.

Model Reviews:

The Protectors all include a Skull Spider just like we saw with the Masters. The color distribution and pairings are exactly the same as the Masters, including the stone Skull Spider having a scorpion tail. Personally I wish that we got different color variants for the Protector sets. Now after seeing these same ones with the Masters I just don’t even care about them to be quite honest.

The Protectors definitely have a little bit more of a Matoran look than a Turaga look, but something about them still gives off that wise energy. Looking at the collective wave of Protectors, they are certainly more similar to one another than the Masters were in terms of the overall construction, but they still appear very unique and I think do a great job of connecting visually to their respective Toa. The most blatant cases of this to me are the arms on the Protector of Stone which mirror what we saw last week with Pohatu, as well as the Protector of Ice which includes a shield piece just like Kopaka. The Protector of Earth features a broader chest like Onua, personally this is my favorite of the bunch. He just looks so stealth and once again those purple highlights with black as the main color look incredible.

The Protectors each have built out weaponry which I prefer compared to a single piece. It’s interesting because they are all the same general function but the building out of each one provides a completely unique variation for each Protector that keeps them from going stale. Perhaps the worst part about this wave though is the function of those weapons. The weapons are triggered by twisting a black gear on each of the protectors, which flings studs out of the shooted in a circular pattern. It’s explosive, sure, but especially for kids there’s no way to keep from losing those studs. They bounce all over the place and have got to be the most impractical weapon we’ve ever seen in Bionicle. I understand what they’re trying to do from a lore perspective, but this didn’t translate well to set form.

The masks are something we can’t go without talking about for a minute. They’re arguably the best part of these sets along with the weaponry. The masks are unfortunately the same mold throughout all 6 Protectors, but you really don’t notice that since the gradient of each is so bold with the transparent colors. So as much as I want to hammer these sets for repeating masks, they pull it off.

Power-Up Combiners:

As we’ve seen on the boxes for the Masters and Protectors, there are combination models known as the Power-Up Combiners. The Power-Up Models give each of the Protector weapons and some additional armor to the Toa to reflect their boosted abilities once they put on their golden mask.

Unlike in Gen 1 where the instructions for combinations were right in the booklet for us, the instructions for the Power-Up Combiners were all released online. They’re easy enough to find nowadays. Each of their transformations are really quite simple. Essentially you take the weapon from the Protector along with a few armor pieces and slap them on the Toa with their Golden Mask, and bam, now you’ve got the Power-Up combiner.

Current Pricing & Final Thoughts:

Picking up these sets is a little bit cheaper than the Masters. In used condition they each will run you about $15, and tend to hover around $50 in sealed condition. That sealed price will vary though based on which Protector you’re getting though. To no surprise the Protector of Earth is typically the most expensive coming in at around $70 sealed.

At the end of the day the Protectors are good sets, but definitely fall a bit short of the bar set by the Masters last week.

Score: 7.7/10

Video Review: