We kick off a busy day here at The Lego Car Blog with this, er… well it isn’t a car. But in our heads it’s going ‘bibibibibibi…’ as it flies and that’s all the reason we need to post it. Flickr’s talented Tyler aka Legohaulic is the builder, and you can see more at the link.
Lining up against the playground fence for team selection are SuperHardcoreDave‘s (best Flickr name ever?) assorted mechs. Our choice is the second from the left. You can see more of all four via the link above.
It’s time for another TLCB set review! Today we take a trip back into one of the darkest corners of LEGO’s archives. The year is 1997, Bill Clinton has been elected for a second term, Hong Kong returns to Chinese rule, Toyota launch the Prius hybrid, and The LEGO Company kill off their best loved theme – Town.
LEGO were in trouble in the late ’90s. Not enough children were buying construction toys, and the perceived threat from computer games and electronics pushed the company down a very dark avenue. Their response was to drastically simplify the Town range through a series of easy-to-build almost pre-fabricated sets, and to lighten (read cheapen) Technic construction.
Whilst there was a notable highlight in the 1997 Technic range it was mostly about as appealing as Chrysler’s late ’90s car line-up – picking a favourite was like choosing the best of the venereal diseases. So here was our pick at the time, the somewhat odd-looking 8437 Sahara Blaster.
8437 was a sort-of dune buggy, Paris-Dakar type thing, but so loose was its affiliation with the real world vehicles on which it was apparently based in some markets LEGO called it the ‘Future Car’ to hide its inaccuracies.
Ok, so first the good stuff. 8437 does actually contain some lovely Technic engineering. Rear suspension, a V4 engine, differential, and working steering all feature. The Sahara Blaster also came with the option of bundling in LEGO’s new 9V motor, which could be slotted into the rear in place of the piston engine in just a few seconds. This made the set a wonderfully playable thing, especially with its brilliant air-filled balloon tyres.
And now the bad stuff. Those huge tyres meant the steering was minimal, and it was further worsened by a very weak Hand Of God control mechanism, plus – for reasons we simply cannot fathom – the use of a flex-system for the steering arms. These components barely count as LEGO, being completely useless for any other application, and they’re also woefully inadequate for holding the steering together on what is supposed to be a tough off-road vehicle. If you crashed your Sahara Blaster into a sofa, the steering would break, and fixing it was like wiring a plug wearing oven gloves – immensely difficult and no fun at all.
Plus it looked like nothing in particular, the seats would fall out all the time, opening the doors would break the top of the roof, and we’re not even going to start reviewing the B-model…
And yet, somehow we still quite like 8437. Maybe it’s those tyres, maybe it’s because it’s blue, or maybe it’s because things were going to get even worse in 1998…
5/10
This off-road tank transporting truck was suggested to us via the Feedback and Submission Suggestions page, and it’s the work of Hajdekr on Flickr. Whilst we’re not sure a roll-on/off system could lift something like a tank in the real world, Hajdekr’s model very neatly combines both System and Technic parts to make it work. You can see more at the link.
Olive green Lego bricks are rarer than elephant eggs, so we can’t begin to imagine the complexity of trying to find all the olive parts needed for this Novvember entry. 6kyubi6 is the builder and you can see more of his sci-fi fighter on Flickr.
With many Lego blogs focusing on the money today, we’re keeping TLCB focussed on the Lego, and what better way to counter the ridiculousness of Black Friday than with some ridiculousness of our own? Plus ours is pink!
This brilliant mini-figure Bosozoku Kaidou car comes from Flickr’s Tamotsu Nobusawa, who has recreated one of Japan’s weirdest automotive sub-cultures in perfect Lego form. If Bosozoku Kaidou is new to you we highly recommend giving it a Google, although be prepared to lose a good part of your day. There’s more to see of Tamotsu’s creation on Flickr – just click the above.
Tomorrow someone is going die fighting over something they didn’t even know they wanted in Walmart.
The annual greed apocalypse that is Black Friday commences shortly, during which humanity, decency and kindness will be pushed aside for the sake of a half-price electrical appliance.
As this blog won’t be featuring tomorrow’s sales, if you’re in the market for something LEGO-related instead we’d love you to visit our friends over at the amazing Creations for Charity fundraising page.
There are some brilliant creations up for grabs, built and donated by some of the best builders around, and all the proceeds generated are used to buy LEGO toys for underprivileged children this Christmas. What could be better than that?
There’s only one day of the 2014 Creations for Charity event remaining so get in quick via the link above!
Your clicks here are making a difference too. We only allow one advertisement to appear at any one time on TLCB, but thanks to your visits it more than covers the cost of hosting this site and maintaining TLCB Executive Washroom and Sauna.
We’ll update you all on where this revenue is being donated when we reach the next nice round number. We hope that we’re managing to operate a little differently to many of the other blogs in the Lego Community, and all thanks for the ability to do this go to you guys – this blog would be nothing without you.
TLCB Team
When he hears the fire bell chime,
Fireman Sam is there on time.
Putting on his coat and hat
In less than seven seconds flat
He’s always on the scene, Fireman Sam!
And his engine’s bright and clean, Fireman Sam!
You cannot ignore, Sam is the hero next door!
This beautiful 1980s Dennis fire engine comes from Flickr’s Ricecracker, and he’s used more brilliant building techniques in one model than we’ll sometimes see in a whole week of blogging. Click the link above to see more.
The ’80s theme continues here at The Lego Car Blog, and today it’s our own workforce of horrible little Elves that are the delighted beneficiaries.
Such is their well-documented love for all things Transformers-related that we were forced to instate a ‘No Transformers until you find a MOC’ policy, often reinforced by the use of the office air-horn.
Mr. Air-Horn is slumbering silently today though, because the Elves are downstairs happily watching the original 1980s Transformers ‘G1’ cartoon series. This rare demonstration of staff generosity is reward for today’s find; two superb G1 Transformers Nissan 300ZXs created by Alex Wong of MOCpages.
‘Smokescreen’ and ‘Bluestreak’ can both fit a mini-figure inside and they feature some of LEGO’s awesome retro printed pieces, but their real party-trick is – naturally – a very slick transformation. You can see how Alex has done it by visiting his MOCpage via the link above, whilst we join the Elves for a bit of cartoon watching…
The world… of the Knight Rider.
Probably both the coolest and cheesiest TV series ever made Knight Rider arrived on our screens in 1982, running for four glorious – although some might say ridiculous – years.
The star of the show was of course the artificially intelligent Pontiac Trans-Am ‘KITT’, a self-aware and nearly indestructible force for good, driven by a crime-fighting David Hasselhoff.
This superb Model Team recreation of the Knight Industries Two Thousand is the work of Flickr’s Alex Jones aka Orion Pax, and he’s published an extensive gallery of top quality photos at his website. Click the link above to visit Alex’s Flickr page where you can be re-routed to the full set of images.
We seem to be having a bit of a Fiat day here at TLCB, and our second Fiat-related product is this rather brilliant Technic New Holland tractor by newcomer Flidsager.
New Holland were founded way back in 1895 in America by the extravagantly-named Abram Zimmerman, who started engineering engines and assorted farming machinery for the farmers in his local community. Success brought both expansion and a buyer, and in 1947 the company was bought by Sperry Rand where it continued to prosper. Further acquisitions by Ford, and then by the Fiat Group followed to bring the business to where it is today, offering the widest range of agricultural products in the world.
The T8.420 tractor shown here is built in the US and is powered by a 420bhp straight-six diesel engine. Flidsager’s Technic version features this engine too, alongside pneumatics powered by LEGO’s Power Function motors, remote controlled all-wheel-drive and steering, a working power-take-off, and a pendular suspended front axel.
You can see all the photos of Flidsager’s incredible Technic New Holland T8.420 on Brickshelf via the link above, and you can join the discussion at the Eurobricks Technic forum here.
We’ve had a good laugh at many of Eastern Europe’s Fiat knock-offs here in the past – ok, all of them – but this one is a bit different. Before the ubiquitous Fiat 124 was reproduced by every dictatorship behind the iron curtain Austrian manufacturer Steyr-Puch manufactured Fiat’s lovely little 500 under license.
Puch’s effort succeeded where every other reproduction before or since failed because it was arguably better than the original car being produced by the thousand in Italy. Puch replaced Fiat’s inline two-cylinder motor with a flat boxer engine of their own design, giving their version of the 500 a more refined drive than Fiat’s.
Around 60,000 units were produced in a manufacturing run that lasted almost two decades, before the Steyr-Puch company was split up and sold off to a variety of different buyers in the 1980s. Brickshelf’s cubo remembers the Austrian success story with his charming Lego recreation. See more at the link.
Ever since we retired the Master MOCers interview series earlier this year we’ve been receiving requests to reinstate it. Whilst we do control The Lego Car Blog Elves with a totalitarian dictatorship, with you guys it’s slightly more of a democracy, and thus the Interviews section will soon be making a Lazurian comeback!
More details will be announced soon, but in the meantime we’ve tidied the Interviews page up a bit to make it easier to re-visit some of the great builders of interviews past. Click here to read their stories, and you may also see a hint of what’s to come.
TLCB Team
Image courtesy of Bruce Lovell aka Bruceywan. Click it to visit Flickr where you can see more of his work.
This particular TLCB writer is too young to remember the 1980s, and quite thankful for it he is too. But a gentle mockery of some of TLCB’s more mature staff is not to be missed, and thus today we find ourselves looking at an example of a modified Chevrolet S-10, one of the ‘mini-trucks’ that were all the rage in 1980s America.
Flickr’s Lino M has added some giant Alpine speakers to the deck (for what we don’t know – this abomination?), scissor doors, and that… er, ‘tasteful’ pink pinstriped paint job as dictated by the time. Accompanying the Chevy are two unmistakably ’80s characters showing us why it’s never good to follow fashion trends too closely – you’ll only regret it later.
You can see more of Lino’s Chevrolet S-10 mini-truck on Flickr, click the link above to see more. No not that one – oh, too late!
Much as we love the Batman Dark Knight trilogy, comic book fans we are not. However, if we were writing this back in the early 1940s we likely would have been, as without the internet (and probably without television too) there would only have been one way to get our fix of action, danger, and men in tights. Wait, scratch that last one.
Clayton Marchetti takes us back to those wartime years with his brilliant recreation of the Batman No.20 comic cover, which introduced the Batmobile for the first time. It’s not really what we’re used to when we think of Batman’s wheels, but hey – even the caped crusader had to start somewhere.
You can see more of Clayton’s Batmobile and his beautifully accurate replica of the No.20 comic cover on MOCpages – click the link above to see more.
