Lego 8978; Skrall

While Lego is, at times, late to the punch when it comes to releasing sets from licenced IP's. I'll give them credit for this one. Releasing a version of the Skrulls 10 years before Marvel would put them into a movie is impressive. Though they were very loose with the adaptation, being that there is a lack of green, the generally spikier look and... what's that? Ohh...

Yeah, I'm not reviewing a Lego Skrull, I'm reviewing a Lego Skrall, more specifically, the Skrall from the first Bionicle wave of 2009, thanks to a local market pickup, but alas, it would appear that this poor grunt hasn't got long for this world without some help from Lego, but I'll get to that one later. Come with me down memory lane, to one of the final Generation 1 Bionicle Sets made.

The thing with Generation 1 Bionicle, and the successor system, the Character Creature Build System (CCBS for short), is that they're very... open about how they work. There are no major surprises in the standard builds, with most surprises in Bionicle coming from the larger builds that tend to borrow more from its own predecessor, Lego Technic (Bionicle, and earlier attempts at the structure Bionicle would make popular, started as Technic sublines). After getting rid of the gear systems three years prior, Bionicle sets became very basic to build, but the simplicity led to a very articulated action figure, something that Skrall continues, though the articulation is hindered due to his shoulder armour being the same kind of swords like the one he uses as a sword. The parts used, and the basic shape of the body gives Skrall a very skeletal look though, very lanky, with some awkwardly placed joints when compared to other Bionicle releases. It's not a deal breaker, but might be a turn off to some. I do like the sword motif and both the swords and mask look really nice in terms of detailing. I especially love the shield, though wish it had a better connection to the hand as it's in a very awkward spot.

In terms of gimmicks, there are a few on display. First is the year's launcher, the "Thornrax Launcher", a basic friction fire launcher that fires the mostly rubber spiked oval when you squeeze the sides of the launcher, and a small disk on the back of his foot that goes into a year-long game you could play. The goal of the game was to fire the Thornrax at another person's Bionicle figure, with successful hits draining the health of the character, and lowering the number on the dial. Last one standing wins. I never played this game at the time because I didn't know anyone else back then who had one, and would be willing to bring it to school (let me remind you that at this point I was in high school). It was a game though that looked to have a power creep problem because each individual dial counted as a separate health bar, so loading a character up with a lot of dials, or just using one of the bigger sets that came with several dials, would throw out the balance of the game.

Anyone else notice that the way this is posed, that arm is breaking the ball socket even faster?

A big problem with this set, and one that plagued not only releases of the character, but the last few years of the lines life was a minor change in the moulding of the ball socket pieces. Calculations were off slightly, so things like the ankle pieces, the new hands that made their debut in this year, along with the thigh and bicep piece, and even the new headpiece introduced in 2009 are very brittle, easily breakable, and almost completely unusable in terms of creating your own builds (I ignore the complaint about Bionicle pieces being unusable for MoCs for the record). This is the biggest flaw of the set, and the number one reason why I struggle to recommend looking for it, because these parts were brittle back in 2009, finding good ones in 2019 is almost impossible. I've actually tried ordering replacement pieces from Lego to see if they can actually make replacements of them now, or if the mould is gone forever. I'll keep you up to date on that if you follow my twitter account.

What was fine for its time, while still looking cool, falls flat due to that minor change in design for the pieces. I can't recommend it as a result until I know if it's possible to replace the parts. It was good for its time, as it was about $10, and gave some more interesting, far more sturdy parts to MoC wit (again those swords look great). But due to the fact that it's not worth $10 now, and it might be hard to find, let alone repair, I don't think it's worth it especially as you can probably buy the swords separately.

Anyway. Hope you enjoyed this little April Fools joke and... what's that? Ok fine, one of the next reviews on this site is going to be that Captain Marvel Jet, to have a Skrull. Why? Because we're coming up to MAYvel once again.