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#Power Rangers Toy Advert
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always so weird when power rangers adapts something that has a toy in sentai and then they just don’t give it a toy themselves. ESPECIALLY when it comes to mecha. like they literally have kids watch a toy advert for a toy they can’t buy
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joesanimationblog · 1 year
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Academic Blog Post #8
Transmedia and Bionicle
When I was growing up in the early 2000s I remember seeing the first run of Bionicle being advertised on television, they were known as the Toa. See the video below...
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Lego was very popular at the time but the Toa were a craze, it seemed like everyone was interested, but what is it about these toys that captured our imaginations?
Transmedia is where different forms of media converge to tell one story, and I think this is why Bionicles was so successful. Bionicle Lore was spread across a range of different mediums and this information was released slowly to keep a sense of discovery to each new release. As seen in the advert the Toa were first, they were clunky looking but able to capture the imagination of fans, perhaps their relation to the elements gave fans an understanding of their strengths and weaknesses as Pokémon had already been an established product and maybe the success of similar looking figures such as Transformers and the Megazord of Power Rangers made the toys easier for kids to love, but whatever the case the early Bionicles were a success. As well as the adverts lore and the toy its self, there was a story in the toys box detailing more lore and a game which could be played if you had more than one Bionicle. Before long people were buying multiple different models and combining them to create their own stories with different elemental combinations and eventually Bionicles became so successful that McDonalds ran a promotion with little disk throwing Bionicles called Tohunga. The Tohunga gave kids masks which they could use to alter the persona of their Bionicle and expanded the lore more as they were the "civilians" of the Bionicle story. In 2003 there was a Bionicle movie called Bionicle: Mask of Light and this gave a deep dive into the lore of Bionicles. Comics also had success and it was clear that Bionicle was saturating every medium it could. As toys continued to sell they kept making more and more products and lore but I remember seeing an advert for a Bionicle browser based video game called Mata Nui Online and this shocked me at the time. Browser based games were uncommon, and this game offered an opportunity to explore the land of the Bionicles, it gave hints about more lore and allowed me to further immerse myself in the imaginary world of BIonicles.
I think its interesting that something can be made as a toy but target markets outside of where it starts, Bionicle transcended the medium of figurines and branched into comic books, video games, books and a film. The key component is the story because that is how all the products within the Bionicle line-up were connected, the aura of mystery the toys created due to their backstory made fans want more, and then the story would unfold across a range of mediums coordinated to help tell the story playing to the strength of the chosen medium, for longer stories there were comics, for world building there was the game, for relationships and dynamics between characters there was the film, and for short open statements designed to inspire the audience there were adverts on television and stories written on paper inside of the Bionicle canister.
Henry Jenkins describes transmedia as...
“a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience.”
and that is exactly what Bionicle was.
Its hard to separate the story from the media used to tell it, but I do think the mix of media made the Bionicle lore seem a lot more impressive and convincing for its young audience, I think Bionicle existing in all those forms meant it was competing for attention in every field and this was a large part of why it was so successful. The amount of scattered information gave the audience a sense of community, I remember discussing lore with a friend of mine who had a different model to me and trying to piece the narrative together from the fragments we would see.
The Bionicle line launched in 2001 and in 2022 and 2023 there have been new Bionicle's being sold by Lego. 22 years later there is still a community of people who enjoy this story and I think this is a testiment to the success of Bionicle and its transmedia approach to storytelling.
Adapting these ideas to my own work
I find the use of transmedia really inspiring. I had not heard of the term before but my research on the topic has lead me to think about in the context of my own work.
Lore, world building and believability are key parts of my craft and so considering the success of examples of transmedia storytelling like Bionicle gives me insight of ways I can communicate lore to my audience more effectively.
In the future when the right project comes up I plan to produce an animated world with a book of stories and myths set in the same universe. Years ago I found this video essay which coins the term Quasi Lore in the context of the popular game Minecraft.
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The term is used to describe the way the games lore is very open, and is left open to enable viewers to produce their own stories from it. This is what I would like my animated world to do. The way Bionical and Minecraft encourage their audiences creativity through lore is really inspiring to me. I think the medium of 2D animation has the potential to create a world of infinite possibilities and along with books and artwork could produce a large body of interconnected stories and works which all build as one large overarching narrative. This will be deliberately open to inspire curiosity in my audience and slowly released to encourage theory crafting.
all I've got to do is come up with something that has an audience...
Bibliography
Bionicle (2022) Brickipedia. Available at: https://brickipedia.fandom.com/wiki/BIONICLE#Gallery (Accessed: January 12, 2023).
Bionicle 2001 to 2008 / nickelodeon (2009) YouTube. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU3NXZC2ZCQ (Accessed: January 12, 2023).
Henry Jenkins on Walt Disney and Marvel (2015) Youtube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7WRDT43T_Q (Accessed: January 12, 2023).
Hills, M. (2002) “Fan cultures between 'knowledge' and 'justification',” in Fan cultures. London, London: Routledge, pp. 37–60.
Jenkins, H. (2011) “Transmedia 202: Further Reflection,” Henry Jenkins Pop Junction, 31 July. Available at: http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2011/08/defining_transmedia_further_re.html (Accessed: January 12, 2023).
Minecraft's Quasi-Lore and How to Build on it (2020) YouTube. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KDybLytYtk (Accessed: January 17, 2023).
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hal-laren · 2 years
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Lfcc Saturday 9th July . Hal works as a concept designer, comic cover artist and toy designer. He is a UK comic artist at heart and has been knocking around for years, not only creating and self-publishing 25 of his own comics and two graphic novels, but has also worked for mainstream publishers. His art has appeared on covers for Image’s Department of Truth, Sweet Paprika, Cross Over; IDW’s Transformers, ROM, TMNT, TMNT: LAST RONIN, GI.JOE.; Boom Studio’s Robocop, Power Rangers, Titan’s Robotech and many more for American and English publishers such as SHIFT and The 77. In-between creating comics and animation work Hal develops concept work for TV and film, most recently working on Star Trek: Discovery’s Jetsuit and concept work on MUTE, as well as TV commercials ranging from Dr Pepper to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s PPI adverts. Early in 2018 he launched his new sci-fi comic book series Trojan. Website: www.thelaren.com #lfcc @officialshowmasters #showmasters @hal_laren @comic_con https://www.instagram.com/p/CfpHR73sklU/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
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golden-x-mage · 9 months
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top 10 obscure transformers (as in like, toy or comics only weirdos I don't think anyone who's shown up in an actual show should count for this)
10. Revenge Of The Fallen Swerve, a dude I had never ever head of until I came across him in vehicle mode at a flea market and assumed he was some kind of G1 dece movie Sideswipe. He's in last cause hes quite boring besides just the fact he exists
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9. Universe Buckethead, a member of the micromaster Constructicons so basically invisible on his own, but I've always though he was fun for not just being Scrapper and also because of his very silly name
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8. Transformers 2010 Mindset, almost exactly the same story as Swerve but he scores higher cause I think he's cooler
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7. Marvel Comics Hook, Line, and Sinker, three servants of Unicron who were around for some pretty major events and have cool designs but are THE lamest guys ever because of the names. Can you imagine how funny it would have been if we'd had these guys in Rise Of The Beasts instead of Scourge, Battletrap, and Nightbird?
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6. Power Of The Primes Battleslash & Roadtrap (speaking of Battletrap), two guys made up to give the two vehicles that form G1 Battletrap their own robot modes. Battleslash could probably take this spot on his own as he's a bit more forgettable, but do not separate them
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5. Energon Ultra Magnus, one of many 11th hour Armada repaints that got crammed into Energon to bolster the ranks, and probably the toy responsible for making me think Ultra Magnus is cool
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4. Generations Selects Galactic Man Shockwave, an early example of GenSel doing what the hell ever by repainting Siege Shockwave to reference RadioShacks Galactic Man, a cousin of G1 Shockwave (in that RadioShack released the Astro Magnum toy he was based on) that I actually own. I'd own this too if it weren't insanely expensive on the aftermarket
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3. Golden Disc Collection Road Ranger, effectively a generations toy of a 2004 ehobby repaint of G1 Huffer to be the Go-Bots character Road Ranger, except he wasn't called that cause Takara were worried about infringing Bandais trademark. That's not important though, whats important is he looks hard in black and orange and comes with a spartan laser
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2. Combiner Wars Scrounge, a pack in accessory to Combiner Wars Computron plucked from a few issues of the Marvel Comic that I owned in a paperback as a kid, and who I paid entirely too much for on his own on ebay
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Masterpiece Reboost, a repaint of the recent MP Skids based (despite appearences NOT on Optimus) on one of G1 Skids many pre-tf Diaclone colour schemes. A toy I bought entirely because he turns into a Honda City Turbo, a car which the british band Madness did adverts for in the 80s, which were included on a VHS of their music videos that I watched to death as a child
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meihchenphoto · 3 years
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explain the idea of shot---Part 1
I wanted to show the discrimination that women in different grades can face, so my test photo was also taken according to age
Firstly, Gender stereotypes about  young girl
What I wanted to show in this photograph was gender stereotyping at an early age, and according to the literature I reviewed, some of the toys that girls often played with, such as Lego and Barbie toys for girls were mainly pink, and the pink Power Rangers were the only females in this popular children's show. Other than this, adverts for toys that girls play with are usually pink as well as purple, both of which are only used for shots of toys geared towards girls' use.
It was for this reason that I pondered that although surveys show that the vast majority of girls like pink or warm colours and like to play with Barbie, would so many girls really like to play with pink everything if it was entirely up to them, without an ounce of gender stereotyping from the outside world?
So I put the pink Barbie behind a pink rope shaped like a prison, a motif that comes from a game called rope flipping that Chinese girls used to play as children, and I wanted to show that little girls are confined to the stereotype that they can only play with dolls. As I am Chinese, I have used the traditional Chinese game of rope flipping here as it is seen as a game for girls only and boys who play it are often called sissies.
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As I wasn't very happy with this photo, I took other ones based on this idea. In these two pictures I only photographed the doll in the mirror and not the doll itself. Because I wanted to show that many of the preferences of children are only what the people around them want them to look like and not what they like, and the use of the mirror here is that I wanted to portray this as the adults would like to see it.
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Gender stereotypes about students
As they get older, little girl reaches school age, so below I will demonstrate the impact of stereotypes on students.
As I described at the beginning of my first post, women are generally considered to have an advantage in arts subjects, but the difference is not apparent when men and women are asked to complete the same science exam.
 So, for this age group my test photos are all about the girls' love of science and the fact that their talents are likely to be buried by stereotypes.
 First, I asked my friend to model for me in these photos. Here I am actually trying to imitate the same scene as in the movie Lolita where Lolita is lying on her back on the fountain in the grass, but here the book my friend read is about mathematics.
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                                               ( From Lolita)
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But then I realised that when there was a model in the picture the viewer's first reaction might be more on the person than on the maths book and ruler I wanted to show, and as none of my other pictures had a real person in them, I took a few other pictures with just a still life.
In these photos I have placed the ruler in a literature book to convey that because of the outside perception that women are better suited to the arts, it leads many women to start school with a lack of confidence in the science subjects and over time give up their love for them.
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goldkingranger1992 · 11 years
Video
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Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers - Ninja Mega FalconZord Advert 1995 
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