Lava Beast Analysis

Presentation

Alright! Summer Bionicle! This guy, the box tells me, is the Lava Beast, a villain who fights the Toa!

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The box is much the same as the Winter Wave, coming in a similar shape and featuring the same design style with the Mask of Control along the top. Lava Beast is prominently displayed, roaring at the viewer. Tahu’s in the background maskless and defeated, and along the edge are these habitat-house things. It’s a really striking box.

Poor defenseless Tahu

The back, besides a wall of legalese, shows off some of the play features, a combiner with the other beasts and Umarak the Destroyer, and a comic showing a face-off between Tahu and Lava Beast.

But anyway, enough of the box.

Inside we have two bags, four of

I dig it.

Lava Beast has some neat parts.

But, as a whole?

As a whole, Lava Beast is, well. He’s a lot like the Toa Uniters in shape, biggest difference being the neck, head, and wrists.

There’s an extra joint in the neck which, due to how the socket is positioned, ends up restricting movement rather than enhancing it — he can’t look straight up. There’s a shadow trap half as a mane-thing, too. I dunno, I think they could have done it better.

Also I have a mild issue with Lava Beast’s jaw. It can’t be closed, meaning it’s in a permanently agape position. It’s also in gunmetal (and the only thing in gunmetal besides the clawtrap mane/ruff), which makes it seem apart from his head sometime. If it were in black it would look so much more cohesive and jaw-like.

The head also has Bohrok-eye horns, which are threaded through the trans-neon green skull. They also serve as the connection point for the jaw, meaning the whole thing moves as one. Which happens to mean that it moves with the brainstalk and so pops off the mask. That’s right, if you accidentally move Lava Beast’s horns or jaw, the mask pops off. Which wouldn’t be a problem, except for the fact that it’s the easiest way to position his

They go on Lava Beast’s wrists, not in his hands. They use a friction pin and gears to prevent them from swinging around — which is cool, because you can position them.

But the question is: what are they meant to be? They aren’t pincers, since they aren’t in a good position for that. According to Shop@Home, they’re ‘lava crystal wings,’ so, okay. Not really sure why its wings are attached to his wrist as opposed to his upper arms or even his forearms, where they’d make more sense. You can’t really get him to spread those wings either, nor can they be used as a weapon terribly easily either. They’re well, a bit of a mess.

Which begs the question: what is Lava Beast supposed to be? A bird monster? Would explain the legs, but, I dunno. He’s odd, I’ll say that.

But he doesn’t look awful. The color scheme feels fairly cohesive — minus the randomly brown calves and gunmetal jaw — and gives him a very lava-y vibe. The trans-black armor on his shoulders and smattering of trans-orange really make him glow. It’s just, well, that’s the most interesting thing about him.

Playability.

You can twist the gears on his lava crystal wings to readjust them, swivel his hips with a gear like the Toa Uniters, or touch his head to make his mask pop off.

Then off course there’s roleplaying and all