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LEGO is quite economical about introducing new parts in its standard sets. One reason is they need to fit in the system, but the other is that hard tooling molds for production is quite expensive.

How come for a theme like BIONICLE they are able to introduce sometimes over a dozen new parts in just one set?

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  • The old BIONICLE line was notorious of introducing too many new parts, but they were from the years LEGO almost went bankrupt. The new BIONICLE line is actually quite economical as far as new parts. Would you give an example of a Generation 2 BIONICLE set that "introduce sometimes over a dozen new parts in just one set"?
    – TheBrickBlogger
    Apr 1, 2016 at 15:00
  • That was a subjective assessment based on looking at the model, I actually didn't count them. I guess I didn't quite mean new parts in a particular set, but rather the fact that Bionicle as a whole has dozens of parts that are not found in other LEGO sets...
    – Wouter Lievens
    Apr 1, 2016 at 22:02
  • BIONICLE is a different (although still compatible) building system than standard LEGO. It has its own system of parts, just like LEGO TECHNIC (interestingly BIONICLE was originally a spin-off of TECHNIC). BIONICLE elements do creep over to standards sets as well. For example large figures in Star Wars, Chima, Super Heroes, etc. use the BIONICLE/Hero Factory building style, also referred to as Constraction (Construction + Action) figures. Hero Factory only had about 150 unique parts. Generation 2 BIONICLE added another 20. Really not that much. Variation is added by different colors and print.
    – TheBrickBlogger
    Apr 2, 2016 at 14:22

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Bionicle sets don't actually make as many new pieces as they did.

Typically, new pieces are weapons or heads, and LEGO company is already cool with green-lighting those. (They're sorta important.)

Gen 1 Bionicles did, admittedly, have a lot of new pieces, but Gen 2 sets, you will frequently find, try to recycle concepts and pieces, just in different colors or with different printing as much as possible.

Hero Factory was pretty revolutionary, with pieces that connected to themselves, (ball and socket,) but for that those were made, you'll see them incredibly often as staples of new sets. That particular kind of new-piece binge shouldn't happen again for a long time, if ever.

I don't know about a dozen pieces in one set though. You'll often find that "new" pieces are just old ones recolored, reprinted, or recycled.

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