Roger_Smith Posted January 12, 2013 Hi there, my name is Tobi, I'm 28 years old and live in southern Germany. (this kind of went out of hand, but I hope some will enjoy reading this. My not so common Lego-story) Growing up I was a major fan of Lego and spent most of my time playing at home building and demolishing stuff. I used to have a giant Lego City in my room, way over 2m² big. My interest in Lego grew exponentially when, I think it was sometime in 1991, my parents helped out a neighbour of ours, who at that time was hgoing through marital difficulties or something. This subsequently led to that Lady gifting me with her son's (who had 'outgrown' Lego, as she said) entire box of Lego as a way of showing her thanks to my parents (they were kinda rich, so I assume this was nothing to her and she was propably getting rid of some stuff that was only taking up space). This box was about 60 x 40cm and 40 cm high and more than half-filled with all sorts of bricks. And, on top of that, there where pieces of a white & blue monorail with lots of track parts and a - mostly intact - giant black and yellow space station. As you propably can imagine, I basically freaked out with joy when I saw that box standing in my room. Unfortunately for me, that box must've sat untouched for a few years, as it was all covered with grime and dust. Additionally, as I soon discovered, its previous owner had thrown all kinds of stuff in there, among them a lot of old batteries, some of which leaked battery fluid all over the place. When my mother saw this, she decided that I wasn't going to get to play with my prize until after she gave all the bricks a good and thorough scrubbing. Perfectly understandable looking back, but back then I was horrified and begged her to be extra careful with that space station. But, when I got home from school some days after, she told me she had tried to clean the space station and it broke apart, so she went ahead and disassembeld it completely in order to better be able to clean its parts. She was certain I'd be able to rebuild it. Right... I was heartbroken, because one thing that wasn't in the box was the instructions. Our neighbour claimed she used to throw those away along with the packaging as soon as the set was built... (7-year old me did an inner facepalm when he heard that) I managed to identify the space station (as you may have guessed, it was the magnificient Blacktron 6987 Message Intercept Base) and the monorail (Futuron 6990) from an older Lego catalogue (both already were no longer produced by that time), and also guessed at some other sets that the neighbours kid may have had (as I found out soon, most of those guesses were wrong), and my parents actually wrote to Lego with my story and asked if they had spare instructions for these sets they could send us. Incredibly, Lego responded and sent us several instruction sheets, along with a 260 idea book, and a letter in which they explained that they didn't have inctruction sheets for all the sets we asked for. So I at least got the instructions for the monorail, but not for the Message Intercept base. I had heaps of fun with my legos, built my city, and oftentimes would put together the monorail (it was the entire thing plus the monorail expansion pack) and some mock space stations with all the space parts I had (apart from the monorail and the parts of the base; I also found a lot of other special space bricks, some of them with print, and I guessed from their overall design (correctly, as it turned out) that they were even older than the few sets I was able to identify. But I never forgot about the Message Intercept Base and started several attempts to build it from the picture in the old catalogue (I treasured that). I never got even close to the original, though. As I grew older, other things came into my life and at some point towards the end of the 90ies, I packed up all my Lego stuff and moved it to the basement. Fast forward to 2012 My lego stuff still had its home in the basement by the end of 2012. A different basement in a different house now, but a basement nonetheless. For christmas, I decided to give some of my old playmobil stuff to my young niece. I dug it up to give it a thorough cleaning, and while on that task, stumbled over my lego boxes. With the big transparent blue and yellow panels from the base and the monorail lying on top. Somehow; i couldn't stop thinking of it, and soon found myself on the internet, doing research. It didn't take me long to find the instructions for the Message Intercept Base on worldbricks. When I clicked through the pdf for the first time, I virtually got goosebumps all over and was filled with joy, because I knew that now I would finally be able to built it! Whenever I thought of Lego over the past two decades, that station never was far from my mind, haunting me being so damn close with virtually all the parts being there, but so far because I had no instructions. The fact that Lego never made a station that looked this awesome (in my opinion) for the later space themes didn't exactly help. I remember doing some internet research on it several years back, after a lively discussion about lego with a buddy, but back then all I found was pictures. So, after the Christmas holidays; I decided to get my lego stuff up from the basement, clean it and put finally together that station! During the cleaning process I came across all the other space bricks, and with help of Brickipedia, peeron and also this forum (I had quite some fun reading Rufus Classic Space restoration project: http://www.eurobrick...showtopic=74458) managed to identify some other space sets that I apparently had from unique or special bricks that only came with those sets (e.g. 6950, 6932, 6890, 6783 and the grandmother of all spaceships, 928). In the first week of January, I went ahead and built it. I was amazed to find that I still had almost all of the relevant pieces. I'm only missing the transparent panel for the small space glider - which I don't remember ever having - one of the sloped bricks needed at the back top of the station, 4 small black/yellow antenna/lever thingies (I used all black ones for now) and one yellow 4-high antenna (I used a white one which stands out like a warts :D). I will try to get all these online somewhere, also an intact 5th Blacktron astronaut - I only have four complete ones left. So here it is, in all its current glory. My Blacktron Message Intercept Base: It has to be the most awesome Lego-thing I ever saw. I absolutely love the design, the perfect color scheme, the way it opens up and manages to put whole stories in my head even at age 28. I can't even begin to imagine how much fun I could have had with it as a kid... But it gives me great feeling seeing it, because something that I longed for for so long and so hard as a child, and which intrigued me even years later is, finally there. Even a week after finishing it, I have to smile everytime I see it. I need to get better pictures of it, though :) I may do a series of posts about this and all the other sets I managed to rebuild (for my first time ever in almost all cases) in the Space-forum if people are interested. So far, I built 6950, 6932, 6890 and of course 6990. 6783 and 928 are left as of now, but I'm missing a few vital parts for both of them (the others are all complete, or only miss a few minor parts). So, yeah. Hi from Germany ;-) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Wedge09 Posted January 12, 2013 Welcome in Eurobricks :thumbup: Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Hoschiebaer Posted January 12, 2013 hey there! had quite some fun reading your story ... for i fun fact i dug out my legoboxes from my parents attic and sorted a big box full of random parts into smaller boxes - including the "Message Intercept Base" aswell (fun fact 2: im from germany myself) im almost into building it up again, though im not sure if i still have the yellow sattelitedishs. cheers, chris Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Leo604 Posted January 12, 2013 Welcome to Eurobricks, love your MOC. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Rixo Posted January 13, 2013 Welcome, I so much wanted the interceptor base years ago, and had forgotten all about it until I saw your picture, so thanks for the memories!! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Brickington Posted January 13, 2013 Welcome to Euorbricks! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Roger_Smith Posted January 13, 2013 Welcome, I so much wanted the interceptor base years ago, and had forgotten all about it until I saw your picture, so thanks for the memories!! It's a real beauty. Back then, they managed to create lots of cool features out of few special bricks (when compared with some of the later space themes, where some sets seemed to consist mostly of special bricks). Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
TimH Posted January 14, 2013 Welcome to the Eurobricks community. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sigolf Brimabane Posted January 19, 2013 Herzwärmende Geschichte! Willkommen im Eurobricks :) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Marc2501 Posted January 20, 2013 Hello, ich komme ebenfalls aus dem südlichen Teil Deutschlands :) (I come also from southern germany) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
