Let's Reboot An Old Obscure Lego Theme

[ColdGoldLazarus]

So unless you've been living under a rock for the past half a century, I'm sure most everyone on here knows what Lego is. And if you've paid any sort of attention to Lego during the '00s, I'm sure you've at least seen promotional material for Bionicle, even if you didn't necessarily know what was up with those weird non-brick action figure power-ranger-like robot-looking guys. But I'd be very impressed if anyone was aware of the existence of the Slizer/Throwbots (which I will henceforth refer to as Slizer, on account of it just plain sounding cooler) line, Bionicle's predecessor.



Releasing in 1999 and ending within the year in 2000, Slizer was intended to be a Really Big Thing, but for better or for worse it wound up being doomed to obscurity while its successor instead took on that role. (and ultimately played a big part in saving the company from its financial crisis at the turn of the century.) Regardless, even though we never got the vending machines(!) that were considered, what we did get were some very neat and well-engineered little toys, a lot of fantastic box art with a uniquely 90's-era aesthetic that sparked the imagination of my much younger self... and a story premise that was as confusing and self-contradictory as it was intriguing and promising.

So let's start with that.

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When I say self-contradicting, I mean that depending on if you went with the American version or the European version, there were two similar yet distinct ideas at play, and everything had different names. In the American version, titled 'Throwbots,' eight beings; Torch, Scuba, Ski, Turbo, Jet, Amazon, Granite, and Electro, all on their separate single-biome planets, doing... things. (The illustrations on the disks they all came with seemed to imply hunting for resources and fighting elemental beings) The European version, (Slizers) meanwhile, had Fire, Sub, Ice, City, Judge, Jungle, Rock, and Energy, all on the same planet doing... things. Occasionaly, they'd all go to Judge's sector, a huge dome-shaped building atop the planet, to compete in tournaments for... reasons. It was all quite vague.


In the European version, the planet was divided a little too neatly into different elemental sectors.

Additionally, they seemed to be split up into two factions; the 'good' ones consisting of Ice/Ski, City/Turbo, Sub/Scuba, and Fire/Torch; while the 'evil' ones were Judge/Jet, Jungle/Amazon, Rock/Granite, and Energy/Electro. Each quartet could also combine, though the results were... decidedly awkward.

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That's the first wave. Then the second wave happened, with both versions falling in line with the European single-planet setup, as a GIANT DEATH METEOR crashed into it and destroyed three of the regions.


It was probably rather traumatic for everyone involved.

Which left us with four new sets replacing half of the old cast and a new, only slightly less awkward combiner of Blaster, Spark, and Flare. Of particular note among the new names was Millennium, whose name was a clear allusion to the new year at the time, and had the ability to convert between a normal-sized figure riding a motorcycle and a large titan figure. It also seemed to be set up as an opposition to Blaster, though that was where the line abruptly ended in order to pave way for the equally short-lived Roboriders and then the much more successful Bionicle.

Oh, and as a final point of interest, there was a fan-submitted design called "Hiker Mike" that got canonized, though they never got a chance to actually appear before the line ended. (Not that there seemed to be any media aside from the magazines for him to appear in, but still.)

And thus concludes the crash-course on basically everything about Slizer. It was all just that vague.

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So why did I just spend an hour or two writing all that out? Because I thought it would be interesting/cool/fun/ect to brainstorm a hypothetical scenario where Slizer/Throwbots did last longer, was more greatly recognized, and most importantly - had a cohesive story told in greater detail through a more official form of media. What would it be like? Assuming we're still working from the same basic premise of four vs four, how would it be developed in greater detail? What personalities would the characters have? (For example, take Judge - cold and unyielding, or gleefully corrupt, or well-intentioned extremist, or something completely different?) Would we go with the American or European version, or use a mixture of both? Would the planet or planets have anything resembling realistic geography? Would we add in any new characters, since twelve is a pretty small roster, or stick to what's there? What about Hiker Mike? And what even is the deal with Millennium and Blaster anyway?

I don't know if anyone else will even be interested in this, but I did find myself wondering what SV's take on it would be, so here it is.

 

[Guessmyname]

...Huh.


I actually have a Rock/Granite slizer. It's lying around... um, somewhere. No idea where I got it from, no idea when, do recall wondering about it though. I was pretty fond of its design.

So that's what that thing was.

 

[Balaur]

I know literally nothing about Slizer beyond what you just posted, but perhaps the European and American planet setups could be combined, by the eight planets being merged into one(thus explaining the weird biomes) by some freaky cosmic force and this forcing the Slizers into conflict?

 

[beleester]

Wow, I remember this series! I had a Blaster Throwbot (I had no idea the rest of the world called it "Slizer"). I also don't recall ever hearing anything about it having a plot or setting, they were just elemental-themed robots that threw disks and that's all you really need when you're 10 years old.

Anyway, I googled some promotional materials, and found a neat little tidbit, which I'm going to take and stretch as far as it can go.

In a far-off galaxy, a group of aliens built disc-flinging Throwbots to protect their planets. Through light-years [sic] of self repair, each Throwbot developed unique powers to help them survive.

Click to shrink...

So, the Throwbots are ancient, intelligent, adaptive robots, abandoned on a planet for a very long time (a situation that just screams "rogue AI plot"). This adaptability explains the elemental-themed forms, and also probably explains why they can combine into super-robots. You might also fluff the four new bots as new evolutions developed in response to the Giant Death Meteor.

(Although there's another advert that says the new bots arrived with the meteor instead of replacing the previous 4, because they love contradicting themselves.)

So for an overarching conflict, I feel they're basically fighting over what to do with the planet. They were supposed to guard the planet and maintain its environment, perhaps terraforming it for their creators, but (1) the Giant Death Meteor has thrown a hefty monkey wrench into the Creators' plans, and (2) they've been evolving for so long that they're stuck in their niche and couldn't handle the big picture even if they wanted. Also, the planet was full of monsters and stuff to begin with, so it's a pretty big job even if everything was working properly.

The Evil team has Electro, Jet, Granite, and Amazon. Jet/Judge was clearly the team leader and their best fighter - he's the super-special hero that wields two disks at once - but has lost his marbles and is now more of a Blood Knight guy, demanding the other bots fight him for trivial reasons, hence the tournament arcs. Amazon is the tactician and also the one who really understands ecosystems, but he's grown hyperprotective of his forest, sort of an evil Elf character. And Electro and Granite were clearly meant to be the backbone of the team - power and raw materials - but they're selfish and greedy, and keep their power for themselves.

That leaves the Good team trying to make the best of a bad hand. Turbo is the leader, doing his best to protect a besieged city. Torch and Ski are a classic "opposites attract" duo, one being hotheaded and powerful and the other quiet and skillful. And Scuba has the "Aquaman" problem where he has a bit of trouble dealing with enemies out of the water, but he's really good in his niche.

One thing I'm uncertain about - are there people on this planet? I feel there have to be - Turbo lives in a city, Torch doubles as a firefighter, the bots are seen fighting monsters and "protecting their planet," which implies there's something worth protecting. But if that's the case, then who? Why did they decide to live on this weird planet? What does this story look like from a human's point of view?

 

[Terrabrand]

Oh hey. I think I used to own, like, two of those guys. Maybe more.

I think they re-used that disc throwing thing for something, but the visual designs were certainly interesting.

 

[cB557]

I think they re-used that disc throwing thing for something, but the visual designs were certainly interesting.

Click to shrink...

Early bionicle used discs, though the discs and pieces used to throw the disks were different. Same general principle, though.

 

[Terrabrand]

Oh hey. I think I used to own, like, two of those guys. Maybe more.

I think they re-used that disc throwing thing for something, but the visual designs were certainly interesting.

Click to shrink...

After making this post I remembered oh yeah there was, like, shoot em up flash games on some lego site about these. I hardly remember the details, but hey.

 

[Vagrant]

I spent way too long on this, I'll have you know.

Spoiler: We Live, We Die, We Rise Again

4000 lightyears from Earth, in a dense cluster of stars, exists a system of seven sizable moons orbiting a single planet. Many millennia ago, on this planet, there existed a race of aliens known as the Slizers. The Slizer race, technologically advanced and expansionist in nature, rapidly came to populate their planet, in every nook and cranny, adapting every possible biome to their liking, rather than adapting to the biomes themselves.

Seeking to expand further, the Slizers turned their eyes towards the seven moons circling above them. Each of those moons was in some way hostile, ill-suited towards Slizer lifestyles. One was a sulphurous volcanic hellscape, another a tidally-locked frozen tomb, still another rich and verdant with greenery and deadly lifeforms. In order to conquer these moons, the Slizer developed advanced robots, tailored for their individual biomes, in order to optimise the collection of the various energy resources that the moons offered for transport back to the planet below.

In order to facilitate effective mining operations on each moon, the Slizers developed automated facilities on each moon, a heavily fortified zone which monitored all of the mecha operating on that moon through wireless systems. Whenever a robot was destroyed, or its signal interrupted, the facility would produce a new one and upload the data of the previous model into it, born anew with all the knowledge of the dangerous environment and hopefully having learned from its temporary tangle with termination. And so, as the machines died and were reborn, they learned.

Each of these facilities was maintained by a small fleet of hovering overseers, Jet Judges, who acted as the OS monitors for each moon's output and production, serving simply as janitorial components ensuring that the efforts of all production robots on the moon acted to serve the will of the biological Slizer that they served. To argue with a Jet Judge is to argue with an unfeeling, relentlessly logical machine. The production robots on each moon did not mind, of course. They were compelled by AI systems just as the Jet Judges were, and were no different.

Planetside, all was kept in smooth running order by the Central Dome, an enormous supercomputer system micromanaging all of the Jet Judges and the ongoing resource-recovery processes system-wide.

It's unknown exactly when it occurred, but at some point an absolutely tremendous solar storm burst forth from the star that the planet of the Slizers orbited around. Fearing the immense magnetic radiation, the biological Slizers decided to get far away from the planet, sealing themselves in self-monitoring suspension carriers, heading far out to the rim of the solar system to avoid the brunt of the storm and return at a later date. Their orders to the Central Dome and its fleet of upkeep Jet Judges were simple: If you're operational after the storm, keep everything going as normal, and await our return.

The solar storm swept through the system, blasting immense amount of polarizing particles into the atmosphere of the planet and its moons, and during this massive influx of magnetic interference all contact was lost between the moon maintenance facilities and the Central Dome. The results were instantaneous. Protocols activated in the case of a robot's transmission being interrupted came first, the weaker signals cut by the magnetic storm, and so each moon production facility received advice that all of its robots were "dead". An attosecond after that, the links between the moon facilities and Central Dome were lost. Emergency systems activated, shunting all of the former iterations of each and every production robot back to the operating source, the Central Dome, and within a second of the interrupted signal automated facilities worldwide began replicating the robots that were presumed dead on the moons above.

Without biological Slizers to assist them, there was no way for these production robots to return to their moons to continue energy retrieval, and so they defaulted to doing so on the planet itself. Hundreds, if not thousands, of each model swarmed forth to attempt to terraform the planet to conditions best suited for their own unique methods of energy retrieval, and the planet became engulfed in mindless AI-dictated warfare in order to establish appropriate biomes. However, not every robot succumbed to the logic commands encoded into them. Some robots had experienced too much on their respective moons, and the self-evolving AI had developed true sapience, or something closely resembling it at least. These were the rogues, the robots free to do as they wished on this planet. Some chose to simply stare up at their moons, wishing to return. Others chose to hide away from the conflict and ponder life as sapient beings. Still others decided to try to rally their unthinking brethren, in order to expand territory with illogical maneuvers and plans. These self-aware robots all eventually died. And were rebuilt. And died again. And constructed anew. And the cycle continues.

However, perhaps worst of all is the fate of the Central Dome. As the overall sysadmin of the entire planetary system, it operated in conjunction with the various linked nodes that were the moon production facilities, slaved to it but seperate nonetheless. The Jet Judges, however, were a different matter altogether. Each of them were not individual systems, but merely branches of the Central Dome. And so, when the Central Dome felt itself severed from all of its sensory organs and then had all of the final data transmissions from said sensory organs smashed together in its CPU, it simply broke. It achieved rampant AI sapience, becoming supremely intelligent and aware, but bound by a simple command. If you're operational after the storm, keep everything going as normal, and await our return.

The Central Dome knew it must enact the final command, and so it set about reproducing the Jet Judges planetside, monitoring the whole world through a panoptic system of drones and computer links. It continues to await the return of the Slizer overlords, and has discovered that certain other models of production robots also retained their core programming. Electing to side with them against the rogues who have developed the absurd notion that the abandoned planet could somehow be theirs for the taking, the Dome wages war on those sapient robots who continue to be reborn with every death, while all around these smart robots the world continues to be torn asunder by the drones attempting to create their own biomes relentlessly.

I was strongly influenced by the Cylons of nuBSG, and their resurrection ships and hub. I didn't dabble in the combining mechanisms, nor the meteor strike and the second wave of Slizer robots, but I may have a play around with them later. I really just wanted to set the scene.

(Also yes, this almost assuredly means that the magnetic storm merely interrupted signals rather than actually shutting down the robots, and so there's likely still absolute swarms of activity going on in each moon's little existence.)

 

[Gitaxian]

The existence and state of the city sector suggests the planet was inhabited at one point, but isn't anymore. Taking the "aliens" origin into account, I'm pretty sure the planet is simply their former home. What happened to them is a mystery that shouldn't be revealed until the end of the story. The Slizers themselves don't remember anything from before then.

The meteor is what kicks off the larger overarching plot. I'd go with the idea that the meteor brought new Slizers rather than mutating old ones. It was actually dragged into orbit of the planet by the aliens so they could mine it.

It seems obvious that Blaster was the second wave's lead villain. Flare and Spark would be his minions, and Millennium would work with the hero Slizers from the first wave. Millennium can give them an upgrade to make up the third wave. Blaster is seeking a set of artifacts (artifacts that are conveniently color-coded and collectible of course) as part of his mysterious evil plan that end up unlocking a secret spaceship hangar. Blaster's team flees to another planet and the heroes give chase. At some point down the line the original evil Slizers who were thought to be killed by the meteor can return at a dramatically appropriate time. (And in new forms of course, so there are new toys to sell.)

That sets up a nice ongoing plotline: travelling to various planets the aliens once colonized to find macguffins, meeting new sets of Slizers at each one.