The Dark Secret Behind LEGO HERO FACTORY!
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- čas přidán 27. 08. 2024
- Special thanks to Bionicle, LEGO Star Wars, and Hero Factory co-creator Christian Faber for letting me do a deep dive into these fascinating documents!
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Nah, we should've gotten this. This would have been great, an actual road for the story to follow leading to a great twist like a villain factory underneath the hero factory, is exactly what the Hero factory theme needed.
It is criminal that we didn't get this.
Yeah. This is why Hero Factory fell flat for me. I liked the characters and toys, but the story? Paper thin as heck and incredibly inconsistent at times.
On the other hand, this did leave alot of room for my own personal story telling when I played with them when I was a kid.
@@DoomguyIsGrinningAtYou. Same why ninjago fell off over time for me, the story didn't have a common through-line.
@@DoomguyIsGrinningAtYou.that was sorta the point. Hero factory was mmeant to be a sandbox theme. sure u had the worldbuilding characters and story but that was meant to provide a backdrop for kids to make up theyr own characters and tell theyr own stories
Man I wish they went this route, this would have been top tier with Bionicle.
The different worlds they got to almost feel like they were stepping into different Lego themes. That would have been cool to see, it's a shame they didn't go in that direction.
that was the timeframe where lego turned to Brand IPs and stopped the themes, not the best idea IMO
I KNEW it, i knew there was always supposed to be a hidden, dark secret in Hero factory. They just seemed too perfect, there HAD to be something shady going on there. The whole concept that the factory creates heroes AND villains as a cure-disease profit practice is super compelling and could've led to awesome stories, perhaps even rivaling Bionicle in some areas. Just imagine, this kind of story, with Transformers prime writing. A dream come true. Too bad literally no one gave this theme a chance. Not lego, not the masses, and DEFINITELY not the bionicle fans who STILL resent the theme for "replacing" bionicle
The masses didn't care much so Lego didn't care. Which led to HF no getting any help as it sank in the mud, the bionicle fans watched the one that was supposed to take their heroes place wallow away in the dark.
It didn't have to end like this
To play devils advocate during the events of Jail break there was very very very heavy implications of there being Being a new factory designed to make a villains with the ending revealing that schematics for a hero factory were stolen
I loved Hero Factory growing up, even eventually getting into combining CCBS and Transformers, like DrScorpionX. Now I do System Brick Transformers but I am sad that HF and Bionicle(both times) got canned.
The idea that hero factory is secretly also the villain factory actually also ties in with the idea of it being a fantasy version of Billund; Lego produces both the hero sets and the villian sets, from the same inventory of pieces
Just like the concept of villians being produced from the waste of hero factory
The same substance, by the same creator, selling conflict to the masses
Hero Factory has one thing common with BIONICLE G2: it was great when you'll look at story drafts and concept arts, but what we received eventually as an official product wasn't even a 20% of what we were supposed to get and now, many sees both series as a trash compare to what LEGO was able to do with BIONICLE G1
Nothing will ever come close to the greatness that was BIONICLE G1.
The "problem and cure" story sounds like it would've been very ahead of its time.
If Hero factory G2 is possible, they should go this route…
Fat chance considering how much ot bombed
Id love that
@@flashbeat9521 G2 bombed, if Hero Factory bombed then there wouldn't even be a Bionicle G2.
Oh there's so much potential with those storylines, the hero factory also creating the villains, especially if written competently, could so easily draw parallels to our own world and pose some uncomfortable questions. I can understand why this wasn't followed through but man I wish we got more of this in the mainstream, rather than " what if good man was evil actually".
The ultimate twist for HF would have been really fascinating to see. But I’m also really sad that we never got the caveman hero/dinosaur villain wave. That would have been so good!
The whole villains emerging from the waste and byproducts makes it sound like there might’ve been something of an environmental message to this. Either that or I’m overthinking it, wouldn’t be the first time.
Faber is a staunch environmentalist. It would totally be in the realm of possibility!
Makuhero. Going by the document, I assume it's supposed to be a play on "make a hero"?
But if it was still called Heronicle or Bionicle: Hero Factory it might actually be the reference to Makuta. Which would make sense if the Maku-hero Factory produces both heroes and villains and why the M is present in the HF logo, contrasting the H. But it doesn't look like it's explicitly mentioned that Makuro was supposed to be a Makuta, even on the sketches.
Edit: I'm dumb, the document outright says it stands for "make your hero".
I love the concept of the villain factory being built underneath the HF! That would’ve been such a cool twist. Idk if it would’ve been handled well, though, based on how IfB was handled…
4:31 That’s why I liked the Jungle storyline with the Quaza the best. It had a nice theme to it.
it feels like lego after Bionicle has just been way too afraid of depth. everything is made to be as easily digestible as possible
Bc the main reason bionicle died was that the story got too complex (not to mention inaccessible) to draw in new fans. Dont get me wrong i LOVE the Bionicle g1 story but i can still recognise the mistakes it made that led to the themes downfall which lego are trying to avoid repeating with newer themes (now if theyr playing it too safe is a whole other discussion which i do not wanna get into)
@@legonerd0666 I get that. But surely a middle ground can be met
@@legonerd0666 Honestly I think the real problem with G1 was how disperse the story was more than its depth. There wasn't a single, easily accessible medium one could pick on the main story; too many important developments and concepts were spread across comics, books, web serials, the MNOG, the films, pack-in content, etc. And only the latter 4 were accessible to everyone; my country, for example, only printed the first 2 books of each series, and I only saw the comics in an activity book from the 2009 storyline or the pack-in instruction stories (with no dialogue)
@@gabrielpeixoto812ur absolutly correct. Bionicle above All Else just wasnt very accesible but lego have learned theyr lesson and recent story themes have All had theyr story told through an easily accesible tv show. Yes there is the occasional canon sidemateriel like the recent ninjago comics but those Are sidestories that u dont need to read to understand whats going on in the show
Maybe this dark secret experiences the rigid and rusty appearance of the villains from the first season.
The closest we got to deep Hero Factory lore was the tie-in books by Greg Farshtey that tie into the storylines of Breakout and Brain Attack (before LEGO pulled the plug when the story was beginning to turn gears).
There are some really cool ideas here, and I wouldn't have minded seeing it all play out.
That being said, I do still love the HF we got. It's just a fun theme and its open-endedness really makes it great for "role play." Anything you make could easily fit into the official canon, which is something that was a bit trickier to work with in Bionicle, given its involved lore. I find myself having a lot more fun conceptualizing Hero Factory stories than I do Bionicle stories because of it.
I can see so many ways the original storyline could have gone with this revelation. We have villains like Von Nebula and Core Hunter who were once heroes, you could reveal that they didn't go bad on their own but discovered the truth and were reprogramed to erase their memories and serve as new villains.
Honestly, I would have lost my mind at the "Villain Factory" twist... Just imagining how that would have played out in the show... or the sets we could have gotten!
Sadly, there were so many cool ideas in this theme that went unexplored. Like Rocka's involvement with the Hero Recon Team, the enduring spirit of Von Nebula, or whoever got the message at the end of "Brain Attack." There was also a villain named "Core Hunter" who got a set, but was never in the show...
Man, I haven't thought about this theme seriously for years. Yet clearly it's stuck with me.
Core Hunter appears in the first book. He accidentally gets killed by Surge by the end of it.
@@Signerdragon123 What book would that be? I'm not familiar with any Hero Factory books.
@@crimsong8068 Secret Mission Book 1.
OK to play a little bit of devils advocate during the end of the Joe break series of episodes in hero factory it was directly stated “ someone stole the schematics to build a hero factory, so someone out there can do what we do here but with anyone” basically heavily implying a villain factory just not directly tied to the hero factory
There’s a specific line in the document with the story/episode ideas that caught my eye.
“Robin Hood needs an ally: What really happened in Sherwood Forest?”
Idk if it’s just me but that’s so interestingly vague.
I'll never get tired of watching him walk backwards into all of the sets down there
I always loved Hero Factory, so seeing all of this is really interesting. It shows that Lego really had a lot planned for Hero Factory, it just never panned out. I do love the first 10 episodes of the cartoon. The dark factory must have been remixed for that "Villain Factory" that was teased at the end of Breakout.
I think Makuro simultaneously being this pseudo mentor figure as well as this ominous character never on screen for too long was a remnant of this. I would entirely be unsurprised if it turned out that guy was evil.
Holy shit, core hunter makes so much sense now! Heck, whole breakout wave too! Voltix or thunder could be made from surge, for example!
They total should have went with an idea like this later down the line. Not in the first years, where it was a more monster of the week type of stuff. I mean, after a couple of years in the line, they should have went with this plot twist. That would have been so epic. I wonder what Makuhero's role would have been in a story like this.
Very sad we never got to see this, but I'm still glad to have gotten the Hero Factory we got since it ended up being such a big part of my childhood. I know a lot of people didn't like that the story was so simple, but as a kid I was able to take advantage of that vague story and expand upon it in my own playing. If they had gone with a more complex story and hadn't left room for interpretation, I don't think I would've grown up to be as creative a storyteller as I am now.
I hade a theory 10 years ago about what if the villains were designed under the Hero Factory, and damn, I was not thinking about nonsense.
The Idea of a villain being created in the underbelly would have been better than any idea that I've got going at the moment.
I always love hearing about the hidden background of HF
The hero factory H logo that they used for the line still has an M in it for Makuhero which is kind of insane. It even kept the fact that the M is also reversed underneath the H in the middle. It’s such a subtle detail but I appreciate that that at least made it into the final product.
After the end of breakout, I remember suspecting there would be some kind of villian factory. Though at the time I was thinking they were still making it to compete with the hero factory, I would have been blown away with it literally being the bottom half of the hero factory.
I see why they didn’t do this, as awesome as it would have been. When you think about it, Lego is not a fan of protagonists or antagonists in their original themes being in the “morally grey.” Category. There are very mature ideas here: the corruption of greed, mercenaries (heroes working for money is something Lego would NEVER approve of, even if they had an arc later where they learn being a hero is its own reward), a company creating both the “good” and “evil” for the sake of profit… even the concept art likely put Lego executives off when they see Veto’s team armed with what obviously looks like rifles.
So, it seems they compromised. Make the heroes inherently good, have a villain steal the hero factory plans in later years, and you still have a villain factory. Unfortunately, this lacks nuance or anything interesting the original story planned. So they decided to abandon the idea post breakout (though I could see the argument that brain attack was originally intended to be the “villain factory” stand-in as they were also made in a factory like facility). And, I think that kinda killed the theme.
Had Faber & Co been given time to cook and iron out the wrinkles in the idea, maybe even started out as Minifig-CCBS Hybrids like that Brain Attack year, I think it could have lasted far longer than it did. In terms of what we got, a couple factors held it back: declining plastic quality compared to price (so many of my 2008-onwards pieces snapped far before my 2007 and earlier pieces did), and trying to muscle in on Ninjago's space of being the "Kid Friendly Adventure Series" (likely mandated by corporate). Had they stuck with a slightly older audience for Hero Factory (the "I'm saving up my allowance" age instead of "I get Legos for behaving at the store" age), simplified the entrance into the world a bit, and revived the ideas of collectibles and combo models and alt builds (which would fit super well with this initial pitch), then we'd probably be looking at Hero Factory as fondly as we do Bionicle.
Bionicle's admittedly rather complicated story also started off really simple: Six Heroes, One Destiny. The difference is that it was allowed to grow with its audience. If they'd had to foresight to provide easy access to the _entire_ story all in one place (or inducted BS01 as a semi-official/officially endorsed resource), I don't think it would have been as intimidating of a task to continue at least the text stories past 2009. With a modern service in the same thought space as Amazon's Kindle (PDFs available for $5 - $10 a book), it'd be easy to have many YA Novels, Short Stories, and Comics easily accessible in one official repository.
Why are prototypes always so much better, then the final product. This is a much cooler concept than what we got.
This is definitely my headcanon ending for Hero Factory
Waow I want a revival of Hero Factory now, would totally watch it!
I first thought the twist would be that MAKUhero is an alternate version of MAKUTA😂 i mean gaslighting everyone and let everyone think that you are their savior and messias is basically makutas motivation in Bionicle 2. It's like thousands of years in an alternate future where makuta actually would have won
Goes with my theory
Breakout was kinda building up to this, the Villain Factory managed to snake into the plot but wasn't really utilized.
But if they followed through, and revealed the Villain Factory instead of making Brain Attack, that definitely would've shaken up the whole lore.
I would love to imagine a evil version to the heroes and their negative inputs
Furno=Blaze, a hot head who would throw anyone in the line of fire for the lead.
Surge=Shock, a radical maniac with electric whips and cowardly.
Breeze=Strato, an indifferent villainess that manages to have a back up plan when caught.
Stormer=Hurricane, a perfectionist commander that punishes his team physically.
Bulk=Heft, a dumb muscle that does more damage without thinking.
Stringer=Trapper, a trap master who has no remorse who he captures.
Loved this AND would've loved to see the Bionicle G2 crossover with the Well of Time. Mr Makuro as a Makuta, Quaza perhaps being a form of protodermis/antidermis with the villain factory etc. I can see that some elements of these early drafts made it into the final version of the series, with breakout's villain planning to make their own Villain Factory etc and it all seems fantastic. It's so annoying to see all the corporate meddling in the artistic department. Lego is playing it too safe these days...
Goes with my theory
Hope someone out there will make a stop motion video about this hero factory lore
When I was still a kid, I always thought about where did those villain robots come from? Who made them? Why did they have advanced weapons to fight toe to toe with heroes who had the best weapons in the universe. After watching this video, I finally know why.
I always imagined hero factory as bionicle in the future where they were able to make their own toa their own heroes and it isn't a far of stretch when you think about it
Honestly even with the existing hero factory plot you can work out that the seeds of this endure even now.
The moment the upgrade gets rolled out, FOUR miners are given upgrades using the same exact building system and go corrupt due to an inability to regulate fuel consumption.
The savage planet somehow has the exact same type of building system as the heroes who only got the upgrade recently.
The seeds were there. Hero factory was sketchy from day one lol
U do realize its bc they wanted the characters to look like the toys.
@@legonerd0666 The real world consequences on the media still give way to lore implications that perhaps weren't intended to be implied yet still are, and it's worth considering.
Of course all the characters from 2.0 onwards used the new building system, they had to advertise the new toys coming out.
But this doesn't change the fact that in universe, within the context of the established lore, the characters all sharing the same building system when it makes no sense for them to do so causes a plot hole that can only be explained if the Hero factory itself is behind it.
It could sound like an idea for a movie. And visual effects done, of course, by Industrial Light and Magic. ILM.
Incredible backwards walking skills. I was flabbergasted at how well you walked down the stairs and then didn’t bump into a single thing on the walls or table.
8:30 Hold on. The whole Makuhero Factory having a dark secret was so eerily similar to many Kamen Rider organizations such as Genm Corporation from Ex-Aid, FENIX from Revice, Desire Grand Prix from Geats etc. That would've been an excellent way to save Hero Factory from being cancelled.
I mean, as an Telugu Indian Lego fan of Hero Factory, Bionicle G2, Legends of Chima, Ninjago, Mixels since 2014, I really wanted more of Hero Factory which is shame that being wound up cancelled due to poor toy sales as a kid.
I wish Hero Factory experiment new concepts as much as Bionicle and Legends of Chima did.
that should have been the idea from the start. the twin factories, whenever one creates a new bot, the other factory also activates to create it's opposite
and the final arc reveal the trick.
instead of the complete lack of direction that it was
*Hero* Vs *Factory*
That sounds so cool, wish they did that!
I loved Hero Factory as a kid and I think little me would have lost his mind over this. I would have much preferred if this came to pass.
Are you still getting a set on the wonder liner?
Considering the show hasn't been around for a while, maybe it's time to continue the story or reboot it using the original plan. Would be nice to see that and maybe get a cameo or two from the original hero cast.
As much as i would like a hero factory revival (it was my favorite thing growing up) it aint happening. The theme didnt sell that well plus lego almost never brings back retired themes (bionicle g2 is the big exception)
Yeah, this is the Hero Factory we were missing, but I can understand (though I can't agree with) LEGO wanting to focus on a younger audience. Unless LEGO decided to split into a 6+ and separate 12+ department, I doubt we will ever see this height of complex storytelling from LEGO again.
Thank you for another HF content!!
By the way I feel like you should add some of the older UCS Star wars sets to your museum
1:24 what the background music called
man great to see more lore from christian faber.
Man they need to bring back the show just for this
As a kid who was coming into Lego age at the same time that Hero Factory was starting, I’ll always be sad that it was cancelled.
For the Anti-Hero thing, it seem like that was the direction thanks to Breakout, like the anti energy source the main villain had. That would have been awesome.
I would of loved it if hero factory still continued and expanded it's story.
Theres a theory going around that hero factory and bionicle take place in the same universe with hero factory set in the future
"Do you know what it takes to be a hero?"
Every time you say, "the sickness", my brain goes, "Oh, ah, ah, ah, ah!" because of Disturbed 🤣
Is it possible you can scan and post these concepts about HF somewhere?
He ltteraly said in the video that hes gonna do just that
@@legonerd0666 He said it about Bionicle stuff as well, but never posted a public link to the scans.
I always belived that HF should shown humans or aliens. I mean, not in a way on getting a Galidor Throwback, but in a Way you feel that HF is in a Medabot/Medarot world. Humans are only moving the plot for the Heroes/villans.
Would be cool if it turned out to be all happening on Bota Magna we never visited it in Bionicle so it could've been like great spirit robots production plant, and after the planet split the factory gone rouge building a city around the assembly pit, so the lake around makehero factory is shaped like a head of great spirit robot kinda flip of island of matanui. And we could say that unlike matoran and toa that had 80-20 proportion of metal to flesh, civilians are 40-60 same or more than glatorians. But Heroes and villains are less than 10% biological if at all.
Goes with my theory
What is the dark secret?
4:13 that tower with that saying "so as below" heavily reminds me of the bionicle symbol
I'm pretty sure that the _Hero Factory_ logo was actually conceptualized by Christian Faber flipping the Three Virtues symbol on its side.
Dusting those toys must be a nightmare
This is so awesome, I wish they went with this story for the final year, if only it lasted an extra year
You gotta wonder if Mr Makuro or Zib knew about this 😲
I always thought as a kid that Makuro was a little suspicious, and it seems those suspicions were justified
Hero Factory presents: The Boys
Duckbricks can you make a lego haul
I like to think hero factory was a prequel to bionicle truthfully.
What?! I always knew that there was a villain factory after break out, and that idea got stronger when brain attack happened, but I thought it was somewhere else, not the hero factory itself?🤯
A lot of this sounds like ideas that I have had for 'Herogue factory'
Yeah. As interesting as this idea is, I can kinda see why the didn't go this route. I think people today are really really sick of the 'deconstruction of the good guys and they're really the badguys' type narrative, *especially* when its done poorly.
That being said, I wonder if a variation of this story could've worked better? Maybe the villain factory is a myth perpetuated by those politically opposed to Akiyama Makuro, the founder of the Hero Factory. Or maybe, he had helped create the villain factory originally first under the pretense he was doing good, but was betrayed, and he fled to another galaxy far away and started the Hero Factory he intended to make.
Or, maybe the *villain factory* is just another intergalactic faction on another world opposed to Hero Factory's overreach in the galaxy. Maybe the Hero's are not universally received as the good guys on many worlds; We've seen hero's turn evil, like Von Nebula, at least we think he did.
I think my core idea is Hero Factory is an anomaly in the universe, and nobody actually believes that they are genuine in their willingness to help.
Jesus this guys house is a wonderland! 🤣👍
Bionicle G2 and Hero Factory never got to live up to the full potential they had.
Hero factory’s simplicity was always its downfall I’d really like to know why Lego scrapped this
OH THIS IS INSANE??? WOAH????
Oh my.
A theme like this original would be perfect to do crossovers with other themes.
hi
If imvation from below didnt happen and didnt derail the whole story, this could had been done
By 2014 the theme was already dead. Ifb was a lastminute experiment to test if similar concepts would do well in a future theme
Not gonna lie-this story makes me wish this theme was out right now lol
Such a shame they scrapped the different era idea, i wanted to see Furno with a cowboy hat.
I don’t know if I should be impressed or terrified seeing all that in your house
If that even is your house
If hero factory ever return here my own ideas makuro have a long lost friend who became bad and use his knowledge to build the villains in secret and that villain is the dark guy in brain attack
Thank you for suiting up just to talk about a dead level series
What I like about hero factory is on hwi you could make an oc and could be canon since we know there's a lot of heroes but know we know taht we make villains too so know ima make a villain when I amje an oc.i thought of an ending so this is my take on it.
The protagonist enter hero factory and battle some of the heroes and all villains with some heroes helping them they beat up makuhero and with only one decision to stop this blow up the whole place.making no more heroes and villains.
Why was Bionicle discontinued and replaced by the inferior Hero Factory-theme?
Bionicle wasn’t selling
I am…conflicted about this, to say the least.
On the one hand, I do like it as one potential route Hero Factory could go (Von Nebula and Core Hunter are both former Heroes and Witch Doctor used to be a HF scientist, so it definitely adds up).
On the other, 1) this would betray the simplicity/variability of the lore that enabled both the Saturday morning cartoon and stories like the Doom Box to make sense within the same series; and 2) to be completely honest, I think this twist would need a lot of revision in order to work. I cringed hearing most of this because it sounds like something an edgy 12yo would come up with; not to mention that, if I’m understanding everything correctly, the villains being manufactured would make just about every character interaction completely meaningless.
tl;dr: Interesting idea, but I’m glad it didn’t go through in its current form.
BRO STOP WALKING BACKWARDS IN A PLACE LIKE THAT AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH----------
I always thoguht it was weird how the viullians looked like the heroes but made of scraps
A use Lego store in Edmonton Canada Alberta call the brickyard.
Has any one realized that the gold dude in the movies that wares a robe looks like a turaga oh no its dume again
He's on the thumbnail
What if bionicle was tribal hero factory like there caveman era🤯
Makuro
Makuta
The evil versions are toa which are the mercenaries which are made to look bad by makuro the heros are the bad guys🤯
9:30 end of Bionicle in 2010 marked the end of Legos experimental period they were no longer willing to take risks that unwillingness to go any deeper is what fans will always see Hero factory as a pale imitator never not the worthy successor to Bionicle.
Now this sounds so much better than what we got, such a neat concept.