>>7869631To me, the hype came from two things. Firstly, I was jealous that my school buddies had those cool Lego robots (which I later learned were called Slizers) that I couldn't buy because they were sold out everywhere. I wanted in on the fun, and Bionicle was the next big thing. We sort of skipped RoboRiders.
And while the toys were cool enough, the world implied by the boxart also moved my imagination, and the short story outline written on some promotional papers was captivating too. The voiceless CGI clips showed a mysterious world inhabited by these neat robot guys, and all the imagery, sounds and the narrator's authoritative voice on the promo CDs got me hooked. I had no idea about the extent of the actual lore and story back then, I had no comics and as I said I couldn't go on the net till later. I didn't know about MNOG or the Tohunga or the exact personalities of the characters. It was the atmosphere and the openness of the world, the intriguing combination of primitive nature settings and complex robots and the premise of an epic but simple story concept that got me interested.
But I'm in a similar boat as you, I missed out on the online fandom for its first few years, like the creation of BZP, BS01 and Mask of Destiny and the first chats with Greg. MNOG was a huge enigma to me for years, everyone praised it so highly but it was taken offline until 2006. I scoured through the fansite archives and read everything I could, trying to catch up and put the limited story info I knew into context. The fact that the franchise had a number of fansites so early on speaks to the buzz it had generated.
