[Review] 8515 RoboRider Wheels

[Logan McOwen]

Review: 8515 RoboRider Wheels

Item number: 8515

Pieces: 4

Original RRP (2000): $1.99

Somewhere in cyberspace, there lived an un-named, advanced species, on a world divided into six regions: Dust, Ice, Lava, Stone, Power, and Swamp. A mysterious enemy arrived on their world and unleashed a virus, which spread across their world.

To counter the virus, the species created wheel-shaped armour for themselves, and six motorcycle-like machines, called RoboRiders, to travel in. The RoboRiders could fire elemental blasts by launching their rider. Eventually, the RoboRiders vanquished the virus and saved their world.

In the year 2000, Lego's RoboRiders line was teetering on its last legs, but it wasn't ready to drive over a cliff with a brick on the gas pedal just yet. Not only was the penultimate The Boss set released, but Lego also started producing these mixed packs of RoboRider wheels, much like what was done with Slizers and of course, Bionicle. Each little box contained four, randomly selected RoboRider wheels, in not only colours included in the sets, but also two exclusive colours; trans. orange and black.

Box

As you can see, my copy of the box is in very poor shape. This here was a recent eBay win - £1, with £3 p&p. I was quite chuffed with that bargain, as you can likely imagine.

The front of the box has a cool graphic, featuring the RoboRiders logo imposed over a grey RoboRider wheel. The glowing details within the center of the wheel are really eye-catching. A small graphic clarifies that the box contains four wheels.

The sides of the box show the eight characters that can be found on the wheels. I really love the art style to these guys - they remind me of chibis, or SD Gundam figures. It's also worth noting that a couple of them have Lego-inspired detailing, which is nice. Also worth noting is the coloured hoops around the characters - these represent the possible colours of wheels available in the box.

This brings back some memories. The top of the box provides the URL to the RoboRiders website, which is of course no longer online. I believe there was an online game available on the site back in the day, which one could use codes gained from the RoboRiders toys with.

And finally, the back of the box. I shan't show you the bottom, as it's just boring legal information. Anywho, the back of the box shows us all six of the canister-sized RoboRiders, and demonstrates the wheel firing function with the Power RoboRider. On the left is an illustration pertaining to the vicious ice region of the RoboRider world, and on the right is what I assume to be the scene of a volcanic eruption. These illustrations are a nice little bonus, and help to set the scene for the wild world of the RoboRiders.

The back of the box opens up as such to reveal the inner contents. Originally, one punch out the perforated tab to open the rear flap, but I wanted to be a little more careful... And failed miserably at doing so. But anyway, as you can see, the box is more that spacious. I'd expect some form of literature, like a small poster of pamphlet, to fill up all the empty space. But, I guess the boxes were made bigger so as to fill up more shelf space and seem more prominent.

Contents

While the contents of each box is different, I though it'd still be fun to take a look inside. As promised by the box contains four individual wheels, randomly selected.

I got the Laser character on a yellow wheel, the Fuel character on a grey wheel, and the Dynamite and Flame characters on trans. orange wheels. What's interesting - and exciting - is that, as I mentioned earlier, the trans. orange wheel colour never appeared outside of these wheel packs.

Just for kicks, here's those trans. orange wheels on the Power RoboRider.

Overall

If you were a kid, teen or adult who had been collecting the RoboRiders back then, these were certainly a fantastic bonus item. Before these packs were released, I assume the only way one would complete a collection of RoboRider wheels would be to buy multiple copies of the sets, so it makes sense that the boxsets were produced. The inclusion of two exclusive colours to the mix is a fantastic bonus too, and I'm glad that I personally got a pair of trans. orange wheels. However, I feel that one thing that could've improved these things would be the inclusion of something other than the wheels. Maybe a head piece, or a wheel shooter, or maybe just a small poser or pamphlet.

As it stands though, these little things are pretty nifty, but I wouldn't actively go hunting for them on eBay though - RoboRider wheels are very easy to find on Bricklink for very little money. But, if you do find one cheap, I say to bite - you never know what you might get!

Edited September 2, 2015 by LewiMOC

[MakutaOfWar]

That box. That box has seen some years.

Anyways, I never realized the wheels actually had those character graphics on them, neat. Would've loved to see those as actual figures though, too.

[TheDesuComplex]

That box is awful. So huge and wasteful! Makes me very glad that they switched to polybags for small sets. The concept of these (along with the Roboriders theme as a whole) is very original and interesting, if quite a bit weird.

[Brickowski]

Hmm, I like those trans-orange wheels. I didn't know they were even available.

I'm very slowly collecting RoboRiders because I don't enjoy them anywhere near as much as Throwbots or early Bionicle, but I might track down some trans-orange wheels. Really makes the look "pop."