Pieces of farm equipment, like American cars, are often named after scary things. Cue the Claas Scorpion telehandler, so called because it looks precisely nothing like the desert-dwelling arachnid.
It is a good bit of kit mind, as is regular bloggee Damian Z’s brick-built recreation, which not only looks the part, it functions like it too.
A variety of implements can be attached to the telescopic elevating boom, including a pair of forks, a tipping bucket, or a horizontal grabby thingy.
Said thingy can be used to manoeuvre bales onto the drawbar trailer, which can then be towed behind, and there’s more to see of Damian’s excellent creation at his ‘CLAAS Scorpion’ album on Flickr. Click the link above to get out on bale.
It’s been two months since the survivors of the select group of Elven ‘volunteers’ tasked with uncovering the new-for-2022 Technic sets returned from The LEGO Company’s HQ. We were down a couple of Elves of course, but you don’t make an omelette without a few Elves getting eaten by the guard dogs. Or something.
But no! Some eight weeks later three very bedraggled and rather thin Elves have made it back! Which means we have three more brand new Technic sets to share with you – huzzah. So without further preamble, here are the final* three new additions to the 2022 Technic line-up.
42140 App-Controlled Transformation Vehicle
The first is this, the ‘Transformation Vehicle’, which is a title both rather meaningless and wrong, as it doesn’t transform at all. What it does do is flip upside-down, revealing another body underneath, and we’d be lying if we said we weren’t properly excited about this!
Controlled by LEGO’s new Control+ app, 42140 can skid steer after the cat via your mobile phone, and if you accidentally turn it over against a chair leg, you can simply carry on using the blue body rather than the orange one shown here, thus continuing the pet torment.
It doesn’t appear as if 42140 does anything else, but nevertheless it looks great fun, although – full disclosure – we may have been influenced heavily by adverts for the Tyco Rebound as children. And yes, toy commercials really were like that in the mid-’90s.
The 42140 App-Controlled Transformation Vehicle includes 772 pieces, is aimed at aged 9+, and is expected to cost around $130/£115 when it reaches stores in March. Your cat’s definitely going to meet its match.
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42133 Telehandler
From $130 cat-chasing devices to a 143-piece pocket-money starter set. The 42133 Telehandler is one of the smallest Technic sets in the 2022 range, costing just $13/£9, and – as starter sets go – it’s perfectly good. There’s working steering (although at the front rather than the rear), and a boom that can raise/lower mechanically too, whilst keeping the fork level. A decent entry point for the Technic range.
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42139 All-Terrain Vehicle
The largest of the final three* sets to join the 2022 Technic line-up is this, the 42139 All-Terrain Vehicle. We’d call this a ‘quad’ in our home nation, which of course it isn’t as it has six wheels. All six are suspended, with a pendular axle on the front and shocks at the back, there’s working steering via the handlebars, a tipping load bed, winch, and a piston engine with a high/low range gearbox.
Which all looks rather good we think, although the stickers are probably unnecessary, plus there’s a chain-saw and a few logs so you can pretend to be a lumberjack.
42139 is aimed at ages 10+, features 764 pieces, and is expected to cost around $80/£65 when it reaches stores. It’s also probably our favourite of the bunch. Unless we want to chase cats.
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*You may have noticed a few asterisk symbols in this post. That’s because these aren’t quite the final three new Technic sets. There’s one more to come, and it might just carry both ‘McLaren’ and ‘Formula 1’ licensing….
LEGO’s slightly uninspiring Technic 42108 Mobile Crane set has certainly proved, er… inspiring, with several awesome B-Models being built from it for TLCB Lock-Down B-Model Competition. Joining previously blogged 42108 alternates like this roll-off container truck and this rotator tow truck, Brickshelf’s mpj has constructed this fantastic JCB telehandler.
With a wealth of mechanical functionality mpj’s B-Model is every bit as technical as the model from which it’s derived, and includes working stabilisers, boom elevatation, extension and fork tilt, all-wheel-steering, and a rotating superstructure. It’s a brilliant build, showcasing both why LEGO is such an incredible toy and the reason why we started this contest; to use what you have to make something new. And awesome.
No, not that awful movie with the Rock in it, but this rather splendid looking Claas Scorprion 756 telehandler by previous bloggee and tractor-building legend Eric Trax.
Underneath that Claas lime green paint job (and some excellent Model Team detailing) is a model packed with motorised functionality, all of it remotely operable via bluetooth thanks to two third-party SBrick control bricks.
A Large Power Functions Motor drives all four wheels whilst a Servo steers all four too. A further three Medium motors operate the boom, giving it the ability to raise, extend, and tilt the variety of dangerous looking implements that can be attached to the end of it.
Fortunately for our Elves Eric’s model is a bit too slow for the Scoprion’s motorised weaponry to have been deployed on them, so they’re riding around on it instead, which they seem pretty happy about.
There are loads more images to see of this superbly engineered and photographed creation at Eric’s Claas Scorprion 756 album on Flickr and at the Eurobricks forum where you can also find a video showing all of the model’s features. Take a look via the links!
Take four of the most inventive Lego builders (including one TLCB Master MOCer), twenty-five 42082 Technic Rough Terrain Crane sets, and inspiration from Honda’s ‘Cog’, one of the greatest car commercials of all time, and you get one heck of a cool video.
One of the four builders behind LEGO’s brilliant piece of marketing is Nico71, who has also taken 42082 and repurposed it to create an excellent telehandler/wheel-loader ‘C-Model’ using only pieces found within the set. Nico’s model features a motorised tilting and raising fork via LEGO’s Power Functions system, mechanical steering, rear suspension, and all-wheel-drive linked to a V6 piston engine.
There’s more to see of Nico’s brilliant telehandler at his website, where if you own a 42082 Rough Terrain Crane set and fancy building this C-Model for yourself you can, as Nico has made instructions available too. You can read full details of the model, view the complete gallery of images, and find building instructions via the link above.
Scrolling through the Brick Badger website can be a dangerous business, especially if you haven’t bought any new bricks for a while. It was a dull Sunday afternoon at TLCB Towers. The Elves had decided to find out which colour of 32009 Technic beam could do the most damage when beaten against a colleague’s head (medium lilac apparently). We were wandering the interweb and spotted the 42062 Container Yard was nearly 40% off on the famous riverine retailer.
The set contains 631 pieces, including a selection of beams in LEGO’s standard blue and orange colours, plus eight, grey 64782 flat panels. Not owning the 42056 Porsche 911, a source of orange Technic pieces is always welcome and the grey panels looked like they’d come in handy for making neat bases for MOCs. There’s also one of the new worm gears and a good number of 18654 (15, plus spares). LEGO insists on calling these 1×1 beams, despite the pieces obvious inability to perform this engineering function. The most obvious new pieces in the set are the 18942 and 18940 Gear Rack & Housing. It will be interesting to see what use MOCers come up with for these parts. The set continues Technic’s trend of axles coming in a variety of colours: red, yellow and brown in this case.
Building the models is the usual, enjoyable adventure with Lego. There is a very nicely produced instruction book for both the main build and the B-model. The different colours are well differentiated and the days of dark grey and black getting confused are long gone. The parts come in numbered bags; building the tractor unit, the trailer and finally the telehandler. It took us a couple of hours of building and tea-drinking to complete the build. Builders at the youngest end of the suggested age range might find this quite a marathon of building and concentrating. Perhaps an advantage of this set is that you can build the lorry (and pause to play with it), build the trailer (and pause to play with it) and finish off with the telehandler. We certainly did!
As you would hope from a set with two different models, there are a good variety of mechanisms for young (and old!) engineers to build and play with in this set. Each vehicle has a different steering mechanism, plus the four-bar linkage that raises the arm on the telehandler, which also uses that new worm gear. Purists might be annoyed that the A model doesn’t use the gear rack to extend the telehandler’s arm. However, the B model does and the A model uses an interesting camming mechanism similar to the locking mechanism found in early repeater rifles. The container grabbing claw is another very neatly implemented version of a locking knuckle. For a set with a relatively small number of pieces there’s a lot here to inspire amateur engineers to experiment and build their own machines.
Sadly, the one thing that this otherwise excellent and exciting looking set doesn’t do so well on is its playability. Compromises have had to been made to keep the set within a certain price range, which is understandable. Continue reading →
It’s a Technic double today, with two entries into the latest TC10 competition on Eurobricks. Both are pneumatically operated creations, as specified by the contest rules, and both show how brilliant LEGO’s little air cylinders can be.
First up (above) is this magnificent Technic snow groomer by Samuel Wharfe, with no less than six air-powered functions. The front blade raises, lowers, oscillates, and its edges can be adjusted to suit wider or narrower tracks, the rear blade can raise, lower and deploy smoothing rollers, and the whole vehicle can be raised above the snow via a pneumatic suspension system. There’s lots more to see at Eurobricks, and via Samuel’s Flickr photostream.
Today’s second pneumatic creation was suggested by a reader and comes from newcomer luukietechnic. Luukie’s heavy-lift telehandler, and it too features a wealth of functions. A Power Functions driven pneumatic pump provides air pressure for the boom elevation and self-levelling attachment, as well as a tilting cabin, whilst mechanics control the telehandler’s boom extension and four-wheel steering. You can see more of the build, including WIP photographs of the mechanics, at Eurobricks via the link above.
Come with us on a journey as we review the cheapest set that The Lego Car Blog has ever examined. We thought that we’d have a change from the big Technic sets that usually feature here. At £3.49 (30% off) from amazon will our purchase prove to be value for money? How will it rate for fun and playability? Will the Elves eat most of the 64 pieces before we can use them? Read on…
Packaged in LEGO’s usual bright and attractive box, 31041 scores over a large Technic set by only requiring a strong thumb to open its cardboard tab. None of that cutting or ripping sticky tabs here. Collectors will obviously want to cut the packaging open with a sharp knife in order to preserve its collectability, in a manner similar to this video. A recurring theme of our reviews is the need for parts to come in numbered bags in order to reduce confusion & sorting and to help make building more pleasurable. Sadly the bag of parts is not numbered, possible as there is only one. On the up side, a quick flick through the 32 page instruction book reveals that it contains instructions for all three models. As we’ve mentioned in other reviews, it would be great it if LEGO did this for their big, expensive Technic sets too. At the moment, builders having to traipse off to Lego.com and download PDF files.
Moving on to the build, the headline model is rapidly built in 14 pages. The construction is the conventional, studs up type. There’s nice use of commonplace bricks, such as 1×1 round bricks and headlight bricks with 1×1 round plates to give the detailing. There’s also the neat use of a 1×2 tile, at the centre of the model, which will make it easier for children to take apart and re-build (which is what LEGO is supposed to be for!). The backhoe is a conventional bit of building too but the front bucket and its arms, are a good example of economical use of parts to good effect.
Builders young and old can learn quite a bit from this tiny model. As with short stories when compared with novels, micro-scale builds force modellers to consider each and every brick carefully. With model completed, you’re left with a spare 1×1 trans-orange round plate, a dark grey clip arm and three 1×1 light grey round plates to shovel around.
In terms of functionality, this is a strong build, which rolls well across a floor or table. Sadly it suffers from the usual problem in LEGO vehicles of having poor Ackerman steering geometry. This is probably due to it having no steering but let’s skate over that one. Both buckets are firmly attached to the body of the tractor and have good ranges of movement. It’s a bit tricky to keep the grey plates on the front bucket, though this can be improved by swapping the corner pieces from the backhoe with on of the 1×2 edge pieces. Overall the model is fun and nice proportioned. It would be great if it had different diameter tyres, fore & aft, like a JCB but that would reduce the flexibility for making other models.
The other two vehicles are strong and fun to build and play with too. The dumper is a particularly nice little model. The way that the rear skip hinges is neatly and interestingly done.
This set is a great little parts pack, with most of the pieces in standard LEGO colours such as black, yellow and grey. There are four, yellow 1×2 curved bricks amongst other useful stuff. It’s also a brilliant, cheap bit of fun for the younger builder in your household: a great addition to that order for the 42055 that you’re buying for yourself (yes, we know, those big yellow rings are essential for your next MOC and it’s the only way to get hold of them). At this price, you could buy three 31041s and build one of each vehicle to use together in a diorama (obviously you wouldn’t be playing with them). Go on, make that investment!
‘Uh oh…’ thought this TLCB writer upon entering the office today. It wasn’t a particularly big or eloquent thought, but it summed up the situation that lay before him rather well.
The keys to the various rooms within TLCB Towers, (including to the Executive Washroom and Sauna, the Archive Halls and to the Smarties Cupboard) hang on a hook, high above the floor and out of reach of the Elves, even if several stand atop one another to form a wobbly tower.
Said hook only had this one purpose, and it had fulfilled its brief flawlessly. It may simply be an inch of curved metal, but the safety and security of TLCB rested entirely in its brassy embrace. Today though this hook was missing something. It stood naked… unadorned… keyless. This was not good.
A panicked run down the corridor revealed several usually-locked doors ajar, and the sound of a jacuzzi water jet on full thrust. Not the washroom….
Sadly our worst fears were realised, and every single TLCB Elf that was indoors when we left last night was found in our place of peace and serenity, defiling it. We won’t go into any details here, but the pool cleaner has got one hell of a job.
The all-night Smarties bender that preceded the defiling was facilitated by a remarkably rare event of Elven teamwork and this; Máté Lipkovics aka Lipko’s spectacular remote control Technic telehandler. Powered by three L Motors Mate’s model can raise, lower and extend the boom (which includes automatic fork levelling) and can extend and retract its stabilising outriggers remotely.
Mate’s creation also includes several mechanical features, such as a gearbox to allow the motors to perform multiple functions, rear pendular suspension, and some trick three-mode steering (4-wheel, normal and crab).
Unfortunately all of this technological cleverness meant that Mate’s telehandler was the perfect tool for sending an Elf skywards on a key-thieving mission, and that the office’s previously unreachable door handles suddenly became portals to Elven debauchery.
We now have a morning of mopping, vacuuming and disinfecting ahead of us (and we also need to come up with a new key storage protocol) so we recommend that you come back later. In the meantime you can check out Mate’s brilliant, but immensely costly for us, Technic telehandler via MOCpages and the Eurobricks forum by clicking the links.
Mini-figure machines don’t appear here that often, but if done well Town-scale creations can be a match for creations several times their size. Our Elves found two great examples of top quality mini-figure models on Flickr today. The yellow machine is keko007‘s JCB telehandler, whilst the elaborate red contraption is Mathijs Bongers Komatsu forester. See more of each via on Flickr the links above.
This good old-fashioned Technic telehandler was discovered by the Elves on Flickr. Bobofrutx has included 4-wheel steering and of course a telescopic bucket arm for all that telehandling. See more at the link. Just don’t let the Elves follow you – we’re not rescuing any more from the bucket.
