>>8165829>>8165928The Inika Toa team were planned to have a 3-year story, the 'ignition' trilogy. Each year had a theme of land (Voya Nui), sea (Mahri Nui) and sky (Karda Nui). Matoro's sacrifice would have been the climax of the 3rd year and presumably the revival would have directly led into Mata Nui's awakening, instead of being a separate thing the Nuva had to trigger.
This was the loose plan at the start of 2006, with details to be planned year-by-year. At some point during the planning of 08 it was decided to shunt the revival forwards to be the climax of 07 (when you think about it, Matoro falling into Karda Nui and making the sacrifice doesn't fit narratively as a climax to 07 at all) so they could make a different Toa team be the heroes of 08.
Marketing-wise, I believe Lego said it gets confusing for parents who are trying to buy a set when you have multiple versions of the same character (and let's be honest Bionicle names are gobbledegook to the average parent). Notice how the official set names are always differentiated as much as possible by adding or removing titles like 'Toa' as necessary. SO the idea of having a 3rd wave of characters with same names as previous years may have been deemed undesirable. Greg has said that in general the story team didn't much care about the fanservice of bringing back old characters and it was only with his urging that characters like the Nuva even continued having story relevance after the sets were done.
HOWEVER; an interview (can't remember with whom) said that there were originally Phantoka designs that resembled the Nuva a lot more, but they didn't perform well in focus groups so they altered them. This means one of two things:
a) focus groups are retarded
b) the more Nuva-faithful Phantoka designs somehow also looked WORSE than the final ones
Incidentally, I've no evidence for this but I'm sure the Karda Nui Makuta were not originally designed as Makuta at all, and that Icarax was meant to be a Teridax set.
