>>8957696>And I still think doing away with the play features and gears is what killed bionicle the first time.Untrue; Bionicle's popularity simply diminished over time as the as the fans grew older and it became harder to attract new ones. Removing the gear function had nothing to do with it - the toys were extensively play-tested and kids simply preferred the launchers over the gears. This is also the reason that the sets got bigger over time. Nothing really "killed" Bionicle the first time, and considering it lasted nearly ten years I'd say it was a pretty huge success.
>The second time was because it came at a bad time in the economy, and they were trying to appeal to the old fans but used the crappy hero factory build stylePartially true. The economy very likely had something to do with it but your personal thoughts on the Hero Factory builds (CCBS) are irrelevant. There's this weird misconception that G2 failed because the old fans didn't like it enough and didn't buy it. But that's dumb because Lego's target audience has been and always will be children. A Lego theme isn't going to do well if kids aren't buying it. Kids don't really care about the Technic vs CCBS debate and honestly probably don't even know the difference. They clearly didn't have a problem with it during Hero Factory's run considering its relative success.
The reason G2 failed is more likely because modern kids just can't be bothered to get invested in new things. Kids like things that are already familiar to them and can't really be assed to take a chance with something they haven't seen before. This is why Lego's sales are dominated by licensed themes; kids already know Star Wars and Marvel so that's what they buy. When you've been using a smartphone since you were 3 years old you don't really develop the attention span that the Bionicle story required (which is why G2's story was watered down so much, but clearly it didn't help much). This is also why we'll likely never get a G3.