What do you get if you cross a Land Rover with a vintage roadster? A Land Roadster of course, with this one owned by Adventurers hero Indiana Jones Johnny Thunder. There’s working steering, space for three mini-figures, and more to see courtesy of Sseven Bricks via the link above.
One of LEGO’s finest themes and eras was the early-’90s ‘Town’ range. Railways, airports, emergency services, and harbours all featured, with perhaps the best of them all being the huge 6542 Launch & Load Seaport.
Cue regular bloggee Thirdwigg, who has set out to recreate all of the elements of the wonderful 1991 set in Technic form, including the crane, containers, ships, truck, and forklift.
It’s the latter of these that he has recently completed, supersizing the original forklift from the set to Technic scale with working rear-steer, and tilting / raising forks, all operated mechanically.
There’s much more of Thirdwigg’s Technic 6542 forklift, and the other components completed so far, at his ‘6542 Bigger’ album, and you can take a look on Flickr via the link above.
The early-’90s were a golden era for LEGO’s ‘Town’ theme. Shops, restaurants, race tracks, 9V trains, and – our favourite – sea ports. The pinnacle was 6542 Launch & Load Seaport, which included two ships, a marvellous crane, and a truck, from which containers of various loads could be transferred to sea or rail, with LEGO ingeniously standardising the container mounts across a wide variety of sets.
Friend of TLCB Thirdwigg (aka wigboldy) is on a mission to recreate this glorious Town set in Technic form, including an upscaled version of 6542’s truck and the containers it carried. With working steering, deployable trailer support legs, and a piston engine under the tilting cab, the increased scale affords a few more working features than the four-wide original, and you can check out further images of Thirdwigg’s fantastic truck and the other components within his 6542 project created so far via the link above.
Humans make a lot of trash. In the United States alone, 146 million tons of waste goes into landfill every year, including two-thirds of all recyclable material. Sigh.
Strangely, considering almost 50 million people in America go hungry due to poverty, the biggest category of waste to landfill is food. This does at least bio-degrade, but produces methane in the process, a greenhouse gas twenty-eight times more potent than CO2. Sigh.
Cue today’s creation, a neat Technic garbage truck up-cycled from the 42203 Tipping Dump Truck. Constructed by Flickr’s Thirdwigg, the original set has been fitted with a piston engine, a tilting cab, and a working garbage compactor complete with hand-controlled tipper, bin loader, and compactor mechanisms.
Building instructions are available and there’s more of the build to see at Thirdwigg’s ‘LEGO 42203 Update’ album. Recycle your own Tipping Dump Truck set via the link above, along with whatever else you can. Especially food.
The mobile rocket launcher is to the under-endowed despot what the ageing BMW blasting terrible music is to the urban douchebag; A tragic exercise in ‘pay attention to me!’, usually spotted driving slowly through a city at great inconvenience to everyone else.
But not today! Because this mobile rocket launcher belongs to the perennially happy mini-figures of Classic Space, whose endeavours contrast markedly from those of the sullen dictator, whose rocket-transporting wares this site has occasionally featured.
TLCB debutant Jan Schönherr-Wacker is the builder of this fantastic reimagining of the vintage 6950 Mobile Rocket Transport from 1982, which is found not parading pointlessly in Red Square or Pyongyang, but diligently at work on the surface of a far off planet.
Eight enormous wheels, a slewing and pivoting rocket launcher, a crew of three Classic Spacemen, and a huge rocket all feature, and you can see more of Jan’s incredible 6950 redux at his photostream. Click the link above to take a closer look at a rocket launcher most noble.
The year is 1984, and the mini-figures of Classic Space are hunting for uranium. For what we’re not sure, but as their exploits are entirely peaceful we’re sure it’ll be for noble research purposes.
Fast forward forty years and the Classic Spacemen have moved on to light and sound, at least if our German is up to scratch. Cue 1corn’s ‘Mobile Licht- und Schallmeßstation’, a fantastic redux of the 6928 Uranium Search Vehicle of 1984.
Sixteen wheels, a smiling mini-figure crew of four, an array of light and sound measuring equipment, and some lunar baseplates covered in sand add to the whimsy, and you join the Classic Spacemen in their measuring at 1corn’s ‘Mobile Licht- und Schallmeßstation’ (6928) album on Flickr.
We like simple mechanical models here at The Lego Car Blog. LEGO’s 1988 Town set 6524 ‘Blizzard Blazer’ (or simply ‘Snow Plough’ in TLCB’s home nation) was a small, fairly ugly tractor, featuring Technic tyres, a posable plough, and a smiling mini-figure. It’s also the inspiration behind previous bloggee Thirdwigg’s upscaled Technic version, which – whilst somewhat larger and considerably more complicated – still flies the flag for mechanical simplicity.
Equipped with a posable plough, a rear-mounted rotating thresher thingy, or a neat drawbar trailer, Thirdwigg’s creation is nicely adaptable too. A working power-take off, adjustable hitches, and ‘HOG’ steering add to the playability, and you can see more – including a link to free building instructions – at Thirdwigg’s ‘Blizzard Blazer’ album, plus you can read his interview in TLCB Master MOCers series via this bonus link.
The early design philosophy of LEGO’s Classic Space theme was to take an item of mundane earthly equipment, paint it grey, and add a satellite dish. Cue Dump trucks, mini-diggers, floor-buffers, and – in this case – a horse-box and trailer.
Taking LEGO’s 452 ‘Mobile Ground Tracking Station’ (aka Space Horsebox), Flickr’s Frost (aka TFDesigns!) has rebooted the vintage set with parts four decades newer, to marvellous effect.
Opening the rear reveals no horse, but handily there’s an array of delightfully spacey equipment available to track one down.
There’s more of Frost’s fantastic 452 Redux to see at his photostream, and you can join the Classic Space shenanigans via the link above.
LEGO’s first large-scale highly detailed models arrived between 1988 and 1990, when the Model Team line launched with three new sets. The 5580 Highway Rig was one of them, and has become something of a cult set three decades on.
Cue this marvellous half-size redux of the 1988 set, constructed by brickphisto, and capturing not just the detailed exterior of the original, but also the opening hood and cab doors, whilst adding a working V8 engine too.
There’s more to see at both Flickr and Eurobricks, where a link to free building instructions can be found (100 TLCB Points brickphisto!), plus you can check out our review of the original 5580 set via the first link in the text above.
LEGO’s 40650 Land Rover Classic Defender is a rather nice little 150-piece pocket-money set. But add just a single extra stud to the dimensions (and a few more advanced building techniques) and it can become something altogether more authentic. Cue SvenJ.‘s excellent 7-wide Land Rover Defender 90, which adds the Defender’s famous ‘barrel side’, triple-rear-window, posable steering, and a whole heap more interior and exterior detail. Building instructions are available and you can upgrade your own 40650 set via the link above.
The year is 1994, and LEGO’s Technic range is riding high. The line-up’s flagship may have been a high water mark, but there were some absolute gems to be had lower down the range too.
The 8062 Briefcase Set was one of them, a brilliant multi-model set that could be handily stored in a plastic, er… briefcase. One of the six models that could be constructed from 8062’s parts was a neat twin-rotor helicopter, and it’s this that previous bloggee Thirdwigg has rebooted for the modern age.
Constructed from smooth new panels and lift-arms, Thirdwigg’s 8062 Helicopter Redux recreates the set’s hand-cranked counter-rotating rotors and opening loading ramp, whilst adding (very clever) collective pitch control and retracting landing gear too.
There’s more of the model to see at both Flickr and Eurobricks, where we hope Thirdwigg will have a go at rebooting the other five models from 8062 using shared pieces too.
You wait ages for a reimagining of a long-forgotten phallically-symboled LEGO theme and then two come along at once. Yes we have another Rock Raiders redux today, with this one coming from F@bz of Flickr, who has redesigned the 4970 Chrome Crusher set and added a whole lot more… well, everything. Except chrome. There’s less of that.
Monster wheels, a frankly terrifying drill, some sort of rail-gun, and a whole heap of superb building techniques make this a model well worth digging into, and you can tunnel over to F@bz’s photostream for more via the link above.
‘Rock Raiders’ was one of LEGO’s weirder themes. Somewhere underground some mini-figures were mining energy-giving crystals (because every LEGO theme at the time had energy-giving crystals), there was a monster trying to stop them, and everything was brown and turquoise. Oh, and the logo looked rude.
It was all over in just two years, but BobDeQuatre is keen not to forget the Rock Raiders theme, reimagining the 4950 Loader-Dozer set to keep the memory alive. A working bucket, an opening cockpit, and a brick-built ‘rock monster’ all feature, and you can hunt for energy crystals underground circa-1999 whilst sniggering at the logo via the link above!
Britain feels like it has returned to the 1970s. Inflation is ludicrous, everyone’s on strike, and it’s only a matter of time before brown patterned wallpaper makes a comeback.
Cue Jonathan Elliott, who has also returned to 1971 via this superb remake of one of the first ever LEGO vehicle sets, the 600 Ambulance. Whilst the original set is a somewhat low-res right-angled affair, Jonathan’s remake is a gorgeous, highly detailed, and surprisingly functional model, wonderfully recreating the station-wagon-based ambulances that were commonly used half a century ago.
There’s more to see of Jonathan’s beautifully presented 600 Ambulance Redux at his photostream, and you can head back to the early ’70s with the rest of us via the link above.
Like, really shrunk it. 1994’s 1,300 piece LEGO Technic 8880 Super Car is one of the all-time great sets, and therefore these days it’s worth about as much as Twitter. With all-wheel-drive, all-wheel-steering, all-wheel-suspension, pop-up head lights, a 4-speed gearbox and a V8 engine, it’s one of the most feature-packed LEGO sets ever produced. Suggested by a reader, this tiny homage to 8880 is, er… not. However -Brixe‘s ‘Micro Super Car’, at a fraction of the cost and using a fraction of the pieces, really does look like the iconic set. Only much, much smaller. Take a look at 8880 in miniature via the link above!