A lot of folks were overjoyed when news surfaced that LEGO Bionicle would be returning in 2015, replacing the less-than-beloved LEGO Hero Factory line. While I’d never owned a LEGO Bionicle toy in my life, I was anxious to give the revived 2015 LEGO Bionicle theme a try–and what better place to begin than with a lime green Bionicle (to match my car): 70784 Lewa Master of Jungle! Am I excited about my first foray into Bionicle? Read on…

The Right:

Though Bionicle was before my time as a hardcore LEGO collector, I’ve heard many good things about the original Bionicle toys over the years and have admired photos of the original figures quite a few times. So was I pleased to see LEGO bring back such a legendary theme? Absolutely!

Not wanting to invest in $100+ worth of 2015 LEGO Bionicle sets blindly, I decided to choose the one that looked the best to me as my starter set. And that set turned out to be the bright green and yellow LEGO Bionicle Lewa Master of Jungle 70784!

The first thing I noticed was how fantastic the box art is for these new Bionicle figures. LEGO really outdid themselves with the graphics on the packaging on these figures, making each Toa look dynamic and visually exciting. I know some fans will be disappointed that these Bionicles come in boxes instead of tubes, but I think the boxes look quite nice.

Once outside of the box, LEGO Lewa 70784 consists of 85 pieces, which doesn’t seem like much for $14.99. But Lewa is actually more of a super-articulated action figure than a regular ol’ LEGO set, and $14.99 for a 7″ figure with this level of articulation is actually quite fair these days.

The build for the LEGO Master of Jungle Lewa figure is fast and simplistic–you basically just snap the ball-jointed pieces together and then put coverings over Lewa’s legs, arms, chest and head. Easily done in under 10 minutes and not a real challenge for any child.

  70784 Lewa Master of Jungle includes two weapons: dual battle axes that are rather large and intimidating. But wait–there’s more! The “blades” of the battle axes can be removed and attached to Lewa’s arms as “X-Gliders”, in which they function like wings (a la Flying Squirrel Mario from “New Super Mario Bros.”). The handles of the battle axes can then be rotated to become sword-like weapons. Cool!

Lewa comes with one action feature, and it’s a doozy–you turn the gear on Lewa’s back and it makes his arms whirl with a lot of power! This action feature works stupendously, and I actually had a lot of fun twirling Lewa’s arms and using it.

There’s one other component to this set: a little blue Skull Spider composed of five pieces. The Skull Spiders are the antagonist in this iteration of Bionicle, and while it seems ridiculous that these little buggers could be a problem, it’s sort of nice to get a tiny enemy “free” with LEGO 70784 (outmatched as it may be).

You can snap the Skull Spider onto Lewa’s head, but the blue skull mask looks quite garish on Lewa’s lime green body. A golden Jungle Mask is also included for the Lewa Master of Jungle Bionicle figure, but it also clashes with Lewa’s colors and looks quite silly on him. It’s hard to fault LEGO for giving us extra masks to stick on the Bionicles, though–they’re not the most stylish options, but I still like having them.

The Wrong:

While I literally had never held a Bionicle figure in my hands in my life until I wrote this review, my wife had all of the original Bionicles. As such, I talked with her extensively about this 70784 LEGO Bionicle Lewa Master of Jungle figure. And her verdict? She really doesn’t like him.

I wanted to include the viewpoint of a longtime Bionicle fan, so here’s my wife’s thoughts: “Lewa looks like a really cool toy. I just don’t get a Toa vibe from him, unfortunately. I freely admit that I might be overly nostalgic, but I really loved the skeletal, robotic look of the original Bionicle figures. They all had really distinct, characteristic outlines. This Lewa is kind of generic, unfortunately. I wanted to like him. But he’s kind of boring.”

Ultimately, that’s sort of how I feel about the 2015 LEGO Bionicle Lewa 70784 myself. While he looks terrific on the packaging with lights giving his body all kinds of shading, the figure itself looks very smooth and lacking in detail–it feels a lot more like a kid’s toy than the skeletal, droid-like classic Bionicles I’ve seen in photos.

It seems crazy for me to be nostalgic for toys I never had, but the style of the vintage Bionicles just seemed a lot more “neat” to me than the new, Hero Factory-esque Bionicle figures.

From a functional standpoint, the only thing that was absolutely driving me up the wall was the pop-off trigger for Lewa’s mask. Snapping the masks on and off of Lewa would be perfectly easy without this half-baked feature, which causes Lewa’s mask to pop off virtually every time I go to move his head even the slightest bit. I’d really like to see these pop-off triggers removed for next year’s Bionicle sets.

In addition, the green Bionicle Lewa 2015 figure looks horrible from the back view. Even if they had only added some coverings to the back of Lewa’s legs, it would have made a huge improvement to his aesthetic from behind. As it is, he looks incomplete from the rear view.

Also, as Bionicle had been out of circulation for half a decade, most kids who see these new LEGO Bionicle 2015 sets in stores (and me) have no clue what the theme is about. Whereas some textual biography of the characters or the world or the concept or anything would be hugely appreciated, there’s nothing like that on the packaging (besides a goofy comic strip that left me totally confused).

I’m pretty “with it” as far as LEGO sets go, but from reading the set descriptions on the online LEGO Shop I have only the loosest idea of exactly what this theme is about.

Overall: While I don’t feel as negative overall about LEGO Lewa 70784 as my wife does, I’m not overly enthusiastic about him either. On the plus side, the graphics on the packaging for these 2015 Bionicle figures looks spectacular, the “whirling arms” action feature works like a charm, the X-Glider’s conversion from wings to battle axes is fun and the articulation is better than the vast majority of toys out there.

But on the negative side, the Skull Spiders seem like a bland and outmatched enemy for the new Toas to fight, the masks fall off the new Bionicle figures incessantly, there’s little to no multimedia support for the line, and the overall aesthetic of the figures isn’t as “cool” and robotic as the originals.

While I enjoyed building and photographing LEGO 70784 Lewa Master of Jungle, I don’t feel at all compelled to buy any more of the figures from this line until I’ve picked up a multitude of LEGO 2015 sets from other themes. I want to love the revived Bionicle theme badly, but Lewa just doesn’t impress me as I had hoped.

GRADE: B-