Lego Technic 9396

Those sneaky Elves have done it again. What with them being small and underfed, they can get into all sorts of places. Whilst this causes all manner of problems in The Lego Car Blog office, it does mean we can get some useful spy-shots for you.

9396 is Lego’s other large Technic release for summer 2012 (the first being the awesome 9398 Rock Crawler we featured earlier in the week). As you can see from the grainy image to the left, this large rescue helicopter includes a few new pieces and some slightly ‘older’ building techniques we thought had been phased out.

Technical functions are controlled through a single input; we can reveal that 9396 uses a gearbox (as on the 2011 Technic Unimog and almost all Lego’s ‘Supercars’) to vary the output, which includes a working winch, retractible landing gear, opening ramp and simultaneously turning main and tail rotors.

To allow the price to be below the flagship models in Lego’s 2012 range the set will not come with Power Functions motors, however  it is designed to easily accept them as an add-on. We can also assume the main rotor is fully controllable from the cabin as a swash plate is visible.

9396 should reach us towards the end of summer. The Technic renaissance continues!