Articulated Exo-Toa

SUMMARY

Revamped Exo-Toa from the 2002 story, redesigned to incorporate fully articulated legs.

BACKGROUND

“Armour... but more than armour... power greater than we have ever known...”

In my opinion, the Exo-Toa was one of the most under utilised ideas in the early years of Bionicle. A suit of armour for the Toa?! Awesome! But it last all of a few minutes before being abandoned. Probably cause it’s legs don’t move.

I do have a personal fondness for the Exo-Toa, as I never had one as a child despite relentless begging. It was then the first set that I parted out and built when I came back to the franchise as an adult. So naturally, it was also one of the first sets I began improving. The Exo-Toa isn’t just a nostalgic set for me, but also where my design and building hobby kicked off.

As a set, the only big requirement for me was giving it legs that work. Now, I love it!

GOALS

1. Ensure that my re-imagined sets are recognisable and as true to the original aesthetics as possible.
2. Improve proportions and articulation, avoiding the overbulked "chad" style.
3. Retain play features if possible, otherwise introduce new dynamic features.

This was a challenge in some ways, very simple in others. In terms of scale, well I can’t play with it much because I want the original Toa Mata to still fit. So I left the torso and the arms alone.

The legs were tricky. I tried for a long time to stick to parts that were available in 2002, but came to realise that I just couldn’t achieve what I wanted without some help from later years.

Do be aware that this set isn’t the most stable as it’s quite top heavy, and a few sections of the build are a bit delicate. Otherwise, I hope you love it like I do!

QUICK DISCLAIMER:

• Elastic/rubber band demonstrations are lifted from the original set instructions, apologies if the angles of the images don't match.
• Rubber bands ARE NOT included in the parts list.
• The majority of the upper half instructions follow the original set instructions, the PDF includes a note of which steps to see for specific changes in my version.
• The "bill of materials" at the end of the instructions lists a different part number for the hoses connecting the head, simply down to the parts available on Stud.io. The Parts List contains the correct part number for Bricklink.
• As the Exo-Toa is a 2002 set using all black pins and axles, I have continued that in my version. If you cannot obtain genuine black pieces, you may substitute for the more readily available red/blue, or I can recommend Vonado and WeBrick as high quality non-authentic pieces should you prefer.