Lego Galidor: The Toy that Almost Bankrupted Lego

hello everyone and thanks for stopping by i know you're here for galadore so i'll make this quick i just wanted to give a brief thank you for the overwhelming amount of support i've been given over the past month i know it sounds funny coming from such a small channel but the amount of positive comments i've received from my videos have been truly inspiring especially for my latest video on the making of bionicle which covers lego's early development of the product line for those of you who have subscribed for part 2 of that series you'll be glad to know that it is on the way in the meantime i'd like to cover a different side of lego a side that revealed itself to me during my research for the bionicle video i came to learn that while the bionicle team was busy working away on the iconic toy line that arguably saved lego there was another team far off in a dark corner of lego headquarters building something far far stranger let's start with some pretext the year was 1998 and lego had just experienced their worst financial loss in history due to an unfortunate series of bad business decisions lego was flying full tilt into the new millennia with each blunder building off the other with so many issues piling up legos struggled to pinpoint the root of the problem and that made it that much harder for them to get a grip on the situation one problem lego thought they had was that they were growing out of touch they started to think kids just weren't into lego bricks anymore and who'd blamed them everything in the late 90s was high octane edgy and ridden in limp bizkit font maybe lego just wasn't cool anymore maybe they needed new blood new ideas from younger minds to help usher lego into the new millennia yeah that was it lego wasn't showing up to y2k and old hand-me-downs no sir lego was showing up with frosted tips jinko jeans and a brand spankin new razor scooter i really wrote that in okay well let's go with it the point is lego didn't think they were cool anymore they thought they needed a change and this led the company to lay off their top designers we're talking old danish guys who'd been working there since the late 70s guys who knew their stuff and how to create amazing products with lego in their place lego hired 30 new designers all young minds with fresh and inventive ideas now there's no doubt lego hired talented new staff but designing with lego was a completely different beast than traditional toy development how would their ideas compete with the years of experience lego's previous designers had with the company that was the moment when lego asked who said anything about building with lego what ensued was one of the most questionable phases of experimentation lego ever underwent of course the vast majority of lego products were still made with lego but after the turnover that was no longer really at the top of their checklist maybe this will put it into perspective in 1998 there were high-level marketing executives that genuinely believed that the lego brick had gone out of fashion essentially proclaiming it to be obsolete this was an observation made by niels milan peterson one of lego's design veterans that thankfully got to keep his job now it's important to note niels was not one of the employees that thought this but he was eventually forced to participate just before the turn of the millennium lego approached niels with a brand new project the company challenged niels and his team to design a prototype line of toy animals and action figures the challenge was to design them to look more organic with more lifelike parts aka without traditional lego bricks turns out the marketing team was getting excited over a new product concept that was working well in test groups this concept incorporated the idea of buildable action figures with interchangeable parts a concept popularized by chris faber who had proposed something similar to the company in 1995. more on that in my bionicle video the project was initially titled project genesis and went through a rapid series of developments during the concept stage the initial idea of toy animals quickly evolved into creatures and creatures quickly evolved into aliens somewhere along the line the name galador was thrown into the mix and now lego had a brand new sci-fi theme in the works unfortunately the process around the toys development phase really is that blurry and there aren't many in-depth details about the product's early stages what is known however was lego's near manic level of optimism towards the project big plans were being put in place to make gallador success including a tv show video games and comics pressure was building for niels and his team to make the toy a hit and it proved to be quite stressful although the toy's initial success in test groups helped to ease the team's fears interestingly galador sheds some light on how large of a company the lego group really is while an entire promotional campaign was being built for bionicle a completely separate multi-million dollar budget was being carved out for galador it was quite impressive actually two somewhat similar action figure toy lines releasing at almost the exact same time by the same company i mean what could go wrong right right that wasn't important lego was too busy planning the next big move for the project and that was the tv show from early on it was decided that the galadore tv show was going to be just as much a part of the franchise as the toys were and for that to work production needed to start yesterday it was late 1999 when all these decisions were being made and lego wanted to release the toys with the show by 2002 at the latest so they had better get a move on lego ended up hiring a producer by the name of tom lynch known well throughout the industry for his diverse portfolio of tween kids shows including the secret world of alex mack kids incorporated and the journey of alan strange tom's original pitch for the show truly impressed lego and captured the company's vision for what the galador theme could be this gave the company a new surge of confidence all over again and in january of 2000 production began for galador defenders of the outer dimension now it's important to note that lego was only partially invested in the television show which is to say they weren't the only company funding the production with big players like disney throwing their hat in the ring as well regardless this was still quite the financial risk for the company producing television shows wasn't cheap and finding networks to pick up the show wasn't simple either thankfully tom was an industry veteran and was committed to making the show a success right out the gate tom became directly involved with the lego team working alongside designers to build the story and characters in tandem as to somewhat sink the production of both the show and its toys after a flurry of brainstorming sessions tom would emerge with the story a wide array of characters and of course its main protagonist galadore centered around a 15 year old boy named nick bluetooth who utilized interdimensional travel by means of a spaceship called the egg but he didn't travel alone joining him on his journey was the skittish robot jens a furry blue alien named nepal an anthropomorphic frog named europedis and his human sidekick allegra zane who in typical 2000's fashion used karate as her secret weapon and as for nick bluetooth's special skill well allow me to show you [Music] that's right nick's superpower granted him the ability to transform his limbs into parts of machines and organisms gaining their abilities in the process this mutant power was dubbed the glinch and apparently gallador invited you to experience it glinching was the driving force behind galador not only did nick utilize this power throughout the tv show but it also served as the main gimmick behind the toys all galador figures had detachable limbs and heads allowing kids to mix and match parts to create their own glitched out action figure unfortunately that meant you could do things like this and this or this and that's not even the worst of it galador's own commercials showed off the glitch and even that looked ridiculous it was almost as if the producers saw sid in toy story and just said that let's let's do that but who were we to judge apparently the concept performed flawlessly among test groups and lego was fully confident in moving forward with the project having mapped out 15 unique toys for its initial release meanwhile somewhere in montreal canada production for the television show was well underway tom lynch approached the project with an extraordinary level of enthusiasm laying out multiple story arcs intended to span five seasons it was quite an ambitious and optimistic undertaking considering the show was starting off with just two seasons under quite a conservative budget those two seasons would span 26 episodes with an air date set for sometime in 2002 production of the show leaned heavily on green screen with an emphasis on cgi for the show's visual effects turns out much of tom's enthusiasm for galadore translated into rather enthusiastic writing making for some pretty expensive scenes one of the challenges of screenwriting fantasy shows is developing an entertaining body of work that still adheres to the limits of a predetermined budget it's akin to walking a tightrope with entertainment on one side and bankruptcy on the other there's a balance to it and once tom's colleagues got a hold of the scripts for the first few episodes they realized what direction tom was leaning when they tried to push him in a cheaper direction tom assured his team that he could make it work ultimately the galadore show was forced to cut corners in a few places certain scenes eventually had to be reworked and the budget was set quite low for character costumes this meant that many of nick's alien companions and his enemies would be accomplished with actors in rubber suits something that the production team thought nothing of at the time besides power rangers was filled with rubber suits and that franchise was pulling in hundreds of millions in revenue every year and as a matter of fact galador actually had something power rangers didn't turns out tom and the lego team had one final piece of movie magic up their sleeve during production of the television show a sound engineer by the name of lao kirsten worked closely alongside galadore's audio department lao's goal was to embed discreet bursts of white noise into certain parts of the show this white noise was actually an encoded audio signal hidden strategically throughout galadore episodes and surprisingly enough this was not a sequence of well-placed subliminal messages turns out lego was utilizing cutting-edge technology to send signals to an electronic toy they were developing for the galadore theme this strange new toy was dubbed the keck power riser the keck powerizer was a mechanical suit of armor that enhanced one's ability to glinch the toy however was a sort of multimedia action figure and in a weird way lego's first and only ever game console along with swappable limbs and headpieces the toy also came with a tiny screen embedded into the figure's back the cat came pre-loaded with 22 games many of which needed to be unlocked as kids played with the toy the games were played by utilizing the keck's arms and legs as a sort of controller there was also a sensor that detected when the toy was being rotated which served as a function for many of the games as well essentially the toy would pick up the encoded audio signals hidden throughout the tv show and trigger an appropriate response whether it be by unlocking a new game that went along with the current scene or activating a voice clip ready these vocal responses would even change depending on which parts were connected to the toy kids could attach the head of jens one of nick's companions or attach the head of gorm his sworn enemy this would make it so the toy either cheered nick on during the show or shouted evil bad guy lines when he was in trouble this proved to be a genius move by the marketing team because it encouraged children to tune in to every galadore episode to unlock new prompts for the toy kids could even log onto galadore.com and download new games directly to the keck power riser as demonstrated in this astoundingly cheesy commercial download new missions from the web reach higher levels win new missions [Music] when the inevitable video games were released for galadore kids could play alongside their keck powerizer which would interact with the game in much the same way as the tv show keck power risers could even communicate with each other allowing kids to play two-player competitive games on paper the idea actually sounded quite interesting but in reality it was somewhat disappointing for starters the screen was incredibly small and in order to play the games kids needed to actively swing the toy's arms and rotate the keck to control it many users point out that the toy isn't incredibly responsive and this can result in having to perform exaggerated movements to get the game to register your inputs trying to accomplish this while playing a mini game on a postage stamp size screen just makes for a frustrating gaming experience early on it was clear that the ambitious nature of the product was a risk for lego not only did the keck powerizer use electronic components it also had a multimedia feature that needed to embed itself into all aspects of the franchise for it to be effective most importantly the keck had to release alongside the tv show which wasn't due to air until 2002 with so much of the franchise's success relying on the release of the show lego had to find creative ways to promote galador until its official launch this was around the time when the galadore website would go online after securing the domain for galadore.com lego moved in quickly to start promotion this kicked off with a fairly new marketing tactic for the time known as the arg or alternate reality game args were quite popular throughout the 2000s and were primarily used to build anticipation for a certain release they were some of the first viral marketing campaigns and were used by multiple franchises including halo to promote their ips the idea behind the arg was to use a platform like a website to craft a world that appeared as though it truly existed in real life let me explain the website for galadore was designed to look like a computer terminal with prompts that users could enter to discover images of newspaper clippings strange schematics and journal entries this was meant to give the impression that users were exploring someone's personal computer and discovering clues to a secret story the site would be updated a handful of times to reveal more clues as galadore neared its official launch eventually users would learn that most of the clues were in reference to a man named dr bluetooth and his plans to travel to an alternate dimension via a spacecraft called the egg this would segue into the tv show's main story where nick dr bluetooth's son would inherit the egg and embark on adventures of his own development of the ark went smoothly and was released in late 2001 by producer gabriel walsh with the help of tom lynch's visual direction sometime after the launch of the promotion gabriel would start exploring external links to see how the website was being received while gabriel was exploring these links one very peculiar website caught his eye it appeared to be some sort of internet forum and many of the users were conversing strangely referring to something known as phase 3 they appeared excited stating that they were ready to begin their travel into the alternate dimension and that users should be ready upon further investigation gabriel learned that the forum was regarding another alternate reality game called ong's hat turns out aung's hat was one of the first args ever created and felt so real and true to life that many users believed it was coincidentally many of the themes surrounding long's hat coincided with galadore's story both args mentioned a spaceship called the egg and both spoke to the topic of interdimensional travel these eerie similarities sparked a frenzy among conspiracy theorists leading them to believe that this was some sort of sign and that the idea of the egg and interdimensional travel had made its way into popular culture this became one of the factors that led to aung's hat being shut down as many internet fanatics would take the story so seriously to the point of camping outside the creator's house demanding answers some but not all believed that the creator of vong's hat was withholding information regarding interdimensional travel and they were starting to become aggressive this eventually led to a threatened lawsuit by the creator of aung's hat which for reasons unknown was never filed thankfully the bad publicity didn't find its way into mainstream media and gallador could proceed with the launch it was late 2001 at this time and galador was steering steadfastly towards a release for february of 2002. as production was wrapping up for the show the lego company and roughly 150 team members were treated to a private screening of the first two episodes and this was the exact moment when things started going downhill to put it bluntly the show was bad galadore's special effects and wow factor were not to the level that lego had anticipated with one of the main issues being the rubber suits product designer niels milan peterson describes his initial reaction to seeing one of the characters he created on the big screen quote it was the first time we saw him the character and it was this man in a rubber suit it really looked like some of those old horror movies from the 50s we really felt like oh this is not what we expected end quote to add to the hurt tom lynch had recently been informed that disney a partial investor in the galadore show had just purchased the family channel this was catastrophic news for tom and his team because at the time family channel was airing power rangers a franchise that was pulling in 150 to 200 million a year in licensing revenue tom being an industry veteran knew this meant disney was going to pour the vast majority of their promoting power into power rangers and galador would be left to fend for itself this news was received only two months prior to the show's airing and would severely impact the outcome of the launch regardless of the fact lego trudged forward and on february 9th of 2002 galador released to the world to add to the promotion of the launch an online game called galador quest was released which had players roam across dimensions solving puzzles and completing tasks to further glinch their character there would also be a promotional set of mcdonald's toys which looked nightmarishly bad but still cleverly incorporated glinching into their play features as for the television show the first episode of galadore would air on ytv in canada and on the now defunct fox kids in the usa reception for the show was less than favorable critics were confused by the story's plot and the visual direction made the show look cheesy and amateur it wasn't long before galadore was being moved around in the programming schedule which was a very bad sign for any television show additionally lack of significant promotion from disney didn't help the show's chances either and it was slowly becoming apparent that galadore's launch was not what lego expected to make matters worse the toys were simply not selling this was most likely due to a multitude of different factors for starters lego launched galadore near the peak of bionicle's popularity this resulted in a competition that gallador would ultimately lose since both toys were in development at roughly the same time it was difficult for lego to anticipate bionicle's success which would ultimately leave no room on the shelf for the galadore theme additionally the toy lines were just too similar with both products incorporating science fiction themes along with buildable action figures it quite literally put lego in competition with itself another issue was the way the toys were marketed on shelves not only did the packaging cover half the toy with box art but it also failed to explain the toy's driving gimmick strangely enough the back of the box never actually showed that the toys had interchangeable parts leaving kids to wonder why the figures looked disjointed and broken inside the packaging looking at some of these images now it wouldn't be a stretch to think this the presentation is quite poor and fails to explain what makes the toys fun in the first place it's especially unfortunate because the idea behind galadore was actually pretty unique most online reviewers enjoy the glinching gimmick finding it to be clever and fun to mix and match with some of the character designs are really creative as well with nepal and his pet shimmel commonly being a crowd favorite but the damage had already been done unfortunately lego ended up making a series of big marketing mistakes that wound up costing them dearly with the toys selling poorly and the show receiving less than favorable reviews it was starting to become clear that the launch wasn't what lego had built it up to be they could only hope galadore's debut video games would come to the rescue and save some of the company's profits the galadore series was set to release two games published by ea one of which was a home console title by asylum entertainment and the other a game boy game by tier tech studios both titles would incorporate the keck powerizer as well with dozens of unique audio cues hidden throughout levels unfortunately since the games weren't slated for release until late 2002 the development teams got a front row seat to galadore's flop nick ferguson a producer for the galadore ps2 game recalls a trip he took to e3 during the wrap up of the game's development having flown to los angeles to attend the convention nick made a brief tourist stop at la's disneyland before the show there he encountered a lego store where his worst fears were confirmed nick recalled seeing a huge bargain bin filled with galador toys alongside a promotion that offered a free galadore figure with any purchase over thirty dollars at this point nick made the responsible decision to withhold his discovery from the team as he knew they were all back at the studio working hard to get the game done besides the developers working on galadore already knew the toy was a flop and weren't entirely thrilled to be working on the project at that point they had even gotten a chance to see the tv show before its release and just like the designers at lego they weren't all too impressed everyone was more than ready to put the game behind them and move on to the next contract but unfortunately that wasn't exactly how it would play out as the game was nearing completion asylum's entire development team was called into a meeting where they were informed that the game had been cancelled unfortunately galador was performing so poorly that lego didn't find it a worthwhile investment to sink more money into the distribution of a game that was more than likely going to flop it was a soul-crushing experience for the entire team at asylum the developers had sunk roughly two years into the development of the game only to learn they would never get the closure of seeing it on store shelves yet strangely enough through some awkward hot potato exchange of property rights the game would eventually see a belated release in 2006 by a company named focus multimedia galadore by asylum entertainment would launch as a fairly competent action platformer with some decently engaging gameplay had lego taken the chance of releasing it in 2003 maybe it would have helped ease the inevitable fall of the toy line but unfortunately that wasn't the case lego would call it quits with galador only six months after its initial launch with the final episode of the tv show airing on august 24th 2002 the franchise would be remembered as an abysmal failure for the lego group one that helped to nearly bankrupt the company looking at the situation from a sort of post-mortem viewpoint it's quite clear that lego had become a victim of their own ingenuity their decision to shake up the very foundation on which the company was built on ended up costing the company dearly and their lack of direction communication and research had run rampant throughout every department at lego this was clearly demonstrated with galadore where designers and team members never got a chance to see the tv show until it was about to air leaving no room for external creative input the same went for the marketing department and how they neglected to showcase the main feature of the toys on the packaging the entire development process was a disjointed unorganized and very very expensive mess thankfully lego would learn from their mistakes the bionicle toys would introduce a new standard for lego's production one that ensured communication and collaboration were at the forefront of the process a little over a year later lego would hire jorgen vig nudestorp as the company's new ceo nudestorp would work to dissect the issues surrounding lego's downfall and construct a roadmap for how the company would return back to the brick a mantra that would illustrate the need to return to the company's roots with fewer pieces more research and better communication between departments with the help of nude storp and bionicle to save the company's profits lego would see its return to the top and the brick would become more relevant than ever before galador was part of the process it was a sign for the company to slow down learn from their failures and figure out what worked and it most certainly was not the glitch

Channel: slow start

Views: 599,790

Keywords: lego, galidor, bionicle, 2022, toys, retrospective, video essay, essay, documentary, lego video games, lego games

Id: CnzbArJuBV4

Length: 26min 40sec (1600 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 04 2022