Three new matoran designs!!!
New designs have arrived.
Hello to my 19 subscribers!
New Grumbletoran
A few months ago (I think October 2024) I showed everyone on instagram my new Grumbletoran. They were highly customisable, being made from parts which come in many colours, and were cheap, containing only 17 common parts.
This made them perfect matoran mocs for any aspiring Koro builders, and indeed I saw a few people building them online.
They looked like this.
These original grumbletoran are easy enough to make, but look a bit blocky in renders. See this red guy for an example. In the real world he would look great, but in renders he looks a bit strange.
Note: I want to see more matoran with nuva masks, we never got any in the original Bionicle toyline.
The use of Bohrok feet opens more colours to play with than the original matoran parts had, such as dark green (which exists for both the feet, and the arms, meaning you can make a Grumbletoran Orkahm, which might be tonight’s non-computer project).
The V1s were designed to be the same height as the original ‘McToran’ which you could get in the Boxor set, the Mask Pack set, and in Happy Meals from McDonalds in 2001. Here’s one below.
![LEGO Set 1391-1 Jala [McDonald's Set #4] (2001 Bionicle) | Rebrickable ...](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_0Py!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4b700cd4-4b8a-4834-a060-f9ab860d96f3_1000x800.jpeg "LEGO Set 1391-1 Jala [McDonald's Set #4] (2001 Bionicle) | Rebrickable ...")
With all these design considerations, and my new popularity on social media, it is no surprise this is the moc that people are talking about the most. They are a lot more popular than the Voya Nui attempts I’d made in the years since Bionicle’s 2006 arc came out (essentially just reworkings of the Piruk frame).
I wish I had saved those mocpages pictures when I had the chance, but time moves on and so do my designs.
And I love the V1 Grumbletoran, but you know me, I am always inventing something new. I wanted them to have their big weird feet again. My experiments were odd, and didn’t always work.
This yellow fellow, like all the rest, is 100% purist Lego. No recolours or altered parts needed. He is a bit wide though, so I opted to continue changing his design. I like him, but he might make a better Voya Nui matoran.
Anyway, without further delay or preamble, I would not like to introduce you to my new matoran. The Grumbletoran V3!
Say hello to Grumbletoran V3!
Just look at these little adventurers!
These little guys (and gal) are here to fill your desks, shelves, and pockets. Like the V1, they are made again with readily available parts, and have a wide range of motion rarely seen in mocs of this small size.
Note: I have opted to use the dark bluish grey metru limb for the shoulder joints for all of them, even if other colours are available (you could have red for Jaller, sand blue for Matoro, lime for Kongu, and dark blue for Hahli) because I think to tie in the robotic, uncoloured parts of their heads with another part of their body is a neat stylistic decision. It says that these characters are indeed biomechanical, and that their elemental powers and orientations are a software put on top of the machine.
That’s my thinking anyway. You might want to be more colourful.
Again like the V1, the V3s are the same height as the original ‘McToran’, the Matoran that came out in Mcdonalds in 2001. That means they are both cute and practical, as these nostalgic creatures are easy to produce, easy to buy, easy to build, and most importantly play with.
Note: The toa metru heads do not take Krana, but you can add a 1x1 rounded Lego plate into the mouth of a Krana to give it the necessary distance from the pointy nose of the metru face, which will allow them to wear them. I’ve done this for years.
Or you could just use a mata head, which I am working on for alternate designs.
But these fellows are not the only matoran I have been working on.
Grumbletoran V4
As nice as GV3 are, they have one critical flaw: They cannot hold krana to their faces. This is an issue if you want to roleplay the Lehvak takeover of Le Koro, which I obviously do because the green Bionicles are the best ones.
This issue can actually be circumvented with a 1x1 round plate to distance the krana and the toa metru head.
He is just a little baby.
As good as this solution is for the average moccist, I wanted to see if I could get the toa mata heads back on these builds in a way which made sense, and which fit the scale.
Turns out I can.
Grumbletoran V4.5!
The V4 exists to not only wear krana, but to offer more variation in eyeball and skull colour. The original toa mata head comes in twelve colours, including flat dark gold, pearl light grey, and bright light orange, making it the most versatile Bionicle head. It can also wear most masks, and all Krana, which is hugely important if you are making lots of these guys.
Infinite possibilities
The eyes for the heads themselves come in nine colours, thanks to the 2004 matoran. I don’t want to do the maths for this post, but if you then consider the colours of masks, bohrok arms, bohrok feet, and mctoran feet available from sets, you have an unreasonable number of combinations of matoran you can make.
I would be very surprised if we both made the same one!
Just look at the potential.
12 skull colours
9 brain colours
13 mctoran feet colours
16 bohrok arm colours
11 bohrok feet colours
That’s not even counting masks or hands, or the mata feet you could use instead, or the mctoran arms (though these are all available in colours which the bohrok used, so don’t add any colour variation, but just structure variation)
But that is still not all…
Grumbletoran V…?!?!?!
You may have noticed the blue fellow above had the original McToran arms. That’s because there are yet more customisations available for those who have these rare parts.
And whilst they lack their disc throwing arm, you can put that back on with a 1x1 technic ball, a 1x2 blue technic pin-axle, and sticking it in the arm and the socket. Like this.
It could not be any easier
Note: for other matoran the arm colour might not be available as a ball, so try black, those are cheap.
Easy to play with!
Fun to build!
Easily available parts!
Get your Grumbletoran today. I bet you already have the parts.
Will you be building them?
If so, use the hashtag #grumblebricks on social media, and I can see them to repost them!