woofmcmoose

Mud Runner / Dune Raider Set #: 6510 Year Released: 1991 Piece Count: 34 Minifigs: 1 RRP: unknown (I think I bought this as a kid for 1.49 or perhaps 1.99GBP). Having recovered my childhood Lego from my parents loft I figured I could fill in some of the blanks on the town pictorial reviews pages. So here we have a neat little pocket money set from 1991; the Mud Runner, to those in the USA, or Dune Raider, to us Brits! No box I'm afraid so I'll have to distract you with...... The Minifig Oh.... Erm.... As figs go, he's not very distracting, unless you are distracted by the colour blue! But look, he has white arms. All in all a basic fig, but not too surprising from a low end early 90's set: The parts There are so few, I'll show them all. Nothing especially rare at first glance, but Peeron tells me the printed '4' tile only ever appeared in this set, and that the yellow horse hitch only in two horsey sets released in 1989 and 1992: The Instructions The instructions are a single double sided sheet with 9 steps in total. The front 'fold' of the instructions provides the same art as the box of the completed set on a plain sand dune and sky type background. You can see from the folds just how small the original box would have been. As with most classic sets there are no part call-outs, but here we only add a couple of pieces at a time and there's not exactly a large pile of pieces to be rummaging through to start with so the build progresses quickly and easily. The Build Here we are at the end of page 1: Almost done, the robot arms (bar with clip) are a neat way of mounting a SNOT light/roll-bar: And done: From this perspective we have a good looking little dune buggy, but a look around raises a couple of issues. The side: Here you can see the light/roll-bar protrudes a good way forward and looks a little unbalanced. It is also sufficiently large that it pretty much blocks out the rear spoiler. Finally the step in the chassis between the front wheels and cockpit looks like its just begging to get caught on some rocks. Good thing he has a roll-bar right? The back: Back here we have two 1x1 cylinders as suspension detail which are a nice touch, and on the whole things look fairly right again- though the big roll bar ahead of the spoiler is still obvious. The Verdict Build: The build is simple, but with some nice touches- the roll-bar and horse frame mean it's not just vertical brick stacking: 6 Parts: Always nice to have printed bits. And for such a small selection, some interesting bits: 8 Figures: Meh, contemporaries of this set already had the basic racing S with stripes or zip pattern: 5 Playability: It has a good 'vroom' factor, so playability depends entirely on the setting you put it in: 7 Overall: For a pocket money set you can never expect too much and unsurprisingly the good bits are compromised by the limitations on size and part count. For me the proportions are not quite right for it to have the '4-wide charm' of other classic vehicles and the characterless fig is a letdown. It was never my favourite model as a kid- though got by as a loser of races, caller of emergency services and general whipping boy to my more prized sets. So overall an average score for an average set: 6 Sorry if this was your favourite childhood set- it just doesn't grab me.

Ever since I got the HE I started considering doubling up as temptingly shown on the back of the box. The train just doesn't look quite right running with an open passenger carriage back end. As my train room (or as my girlfriend prefers; our 'study') is pretty small I was worried about it being rather long though, and spending it's entire time turning corners in a not very 'express' fashion. However, when I saw that people were charging almost 70GBP on ebay for just the power car, I decided it would be far more cost effective to buy a second set and perhaps sell off the middle two passenger carriages- 4 was just too long and I didn't like the non-Jacob's join in the middle. But 2 cars looked equally silly so I set out for 3. First step was to modify the centre car undercarriage to stretch the distance between two Jacob's bogies: However something still didn't seem right! The doors- the middle car and hence the train was not symmetrical. But now having two full sticker sets and one donor car I could remedy that: For this I had to dig in the spares box. To get the windows in I had to borrow 2x technic 1x1 brick with hole to replace the 1x1 with headlight holder on side so that the snot would not obstuct the doors at one end. Then I had to borrow some black 6xn plates to make the removable roof segment (the originals were too long): I was pretty happy with the result overall, long enough for the feel of a sleek express, short enough to fit in my house, and even with a single PF motor, still fast enough to scare the cat! Comments? Suggestions? Anyone else doubled up their HE? A quick search of the forums suggests from your signature blocks and discussions of doubling the no of motors suggests yes but I found no pics or descriptions.

Perhaps, something more European: http://de.wikipedia..../RhB_Ge_4/4_III or: http://nl.wikipedia....wiki/SBB_Re_482 maybe with a hint of Japanese: http://en.wikipedia....ght_Class_EH200

Very Cool! Nice train, and lots of awesome sets for scenery. I particularly liked the deep freeze defender flyby!

Superb looking mechs. Whilst I can see why the comments of 'not strictly exo-force' are being made, my first exo-force MOCs were also chicken walking, many barrelled machine gun toting mecha, and I don't see the particular in-universe problem. Then again I got into exo-force because it was the closest thing to Mechwarrior/Battletech Lego would ever get and your designs would certainly fit in there. My only suggestions are actually for the figs: the lady in black could really use a Mk1 Blacktron torso, to make her a little less featureless, and your mohawk'd lady still has a white fringe, not that I wan't to argue the point wit a girl with so many rockets!!

Snack Bar Set #: 675 Year Released: 1979 Piece Count: 64 Minifigs: 2 RRP: unknown? First shot at a review, starting with a set older than me; I give you 675: Snack Bar. I picked this up on ebay for under $10, and whilst hardly MISB it did come with a B, so lets start there. Looking at the front, you see a nice detail shot of the set on a fairly dull grey/blue background. the Lego logo sits large in the top right corner, and rather than the corner stripe of later sets the Legoland inscription sits on a yellow flap with two holes from which the set would long ago have hung in the toy store. Moving to the back, we see a number of alternate builds, unsurprisingly all Snack Bars: The end of the box shows a slightly different pose of figures than the front and you can spot the perforated finger flap through which entry to the box is gained (I'll skip the bottom of the box as it is much the same, and the other end was missing so I'll skip that too!): The Minifigs We have two nice minifigs, with some simple front torso printing. A Chef and a smartly dressed customer, unfortunately I was missing the 70's hair for the customer so had to replace it with an 80's piece. The minifig heads are the early type with solid stud an extra thick printing, but still look very smart after many years: The parts Quite a few interesting bits here, a printed 'snack bar' brick, 'snack bar' signpost, 2 printed ice lolly bricks a pine tree and a small (8x16) green base: The rest are basically white bricks with a pair of red and yellow 1x1 rounds for ketchup/mustard (sorry no photo). The Instructions The instructions fold out to be around 16 inches long, with half of this length repeating the box art and showing off the other Lego town sets in a nice diorama (note the complete lack of a consistent scale!): Here is a shot from the actual build, which is a mere 9 steps on a plain white background, with no part callouts and one perspective throughout the first 5 steps despite requiring detail to be built behind the walls! The construction is pretty simple though, so as long as you pay attention is goes together quickly. No 1x2x2 or 1x1x5s in those days to simplify things though; also note the unusual plate construction of what is effectively a 1x10 brick (maybe these weren't available in 79 either?) The Build As mentioned above, the construction is fairly simple, although the shelf and cash register are somewhat unsupported and during assembly (and no doubt play) are pretty easy to break off: Which quickly becomes: However once you have re-attached it, and finished the final steps you have a charming little snack bar to adorn your Lego sporting venues, laybys and other events. Here our customer stops stops in for a coffee taking a break from a long drive: He would like some food but the chef can only apologise as, although he has plenty of ketchup/mustard, he has no food or even a stove to cook any on! This is unfortunately the missing 'play feature' of this set, I guess you just have to imagine or build yourself a kitchen onto the open back. I was also slightly disappointed that the cash register had no printing, nor did the white 2x2 which serves as a menu. Still at least there are no stickers! Here you see the back of the shop, our customer has just pointed out he was lucky to find the place, and the chef rushes off realising he forgot to put out the signs: Whew, just in time to catch another customer: The Verdict I never owned this set as a child so have no sentimental attachment to it, but it definately exudes that 'classic town' feel so many of us AFOLs get misty eyed over. Build: The build is very basic, though made more challenging by the instructions: 6 Parts: The printed parts are brilliant, especially the signpost. The tree is also a welcome inclusion: 8 Figures: For the time very good, you can always swap in Gordon Zola if you wan't to bring the set more up to date: 7 Playability: Though there are few specific play features with a little imagination this set would have a lot of play value: 8 Overall: This is definitely one where the whole is greater than the some of the parts. The building is well proportioned to the minifigs and has the wonderful, gambling-with-ones-health, kind of charm you find in many British roadside establishments. It is also eminently MOC-able, in fact I have no doubt a derivative of this snack bar will be turning up on my train station platform pretty soon. So overall an 8

Firstly in case you missed me in the 'introduce yourself' forum; Hello! I'm fairly new to lego trains having had HO scale stuff as a kid I wasn't allowed a Lego train set too. However, I received the 7939 cargo train for Christmas from my girlfriend and soon after got a bit ebay happy and bought a 2nd hand load and haul (though no 9v track or controller). So out came my spares box and after a fair bit of fiddling I came up with this PF conversion which I think makes a neat little shunter without straying too far from the original look: Although I noted the existence of the red battery cover on the first PF cargo train i decided against bricklinking one in favor of some SNOT work using old school hinge plates. This did however end up making her almost 6 wide at the body: As you can see I tried to offset this extra width by adding door runners to extend the footplate on either side. And despite the small gap I'm very happy with the look of the nose. My biggest criteria in design was that I still wanted a driver, though unfortunately he shares his cab with a mess of cable: But he can still see where he's going! And given the loco has only driving wheels and relatively light weight, it's the fastest thing on my tracks by a long way. Thanks for looking. Comments and suggestions most welcome.

Hi all, after being an unregistered lurker for a while I thought I'd finally admit I am once again addicted to lego and sign up. I grew up as a massive space (particularly M:tron) fan and made it as far as Exploriens before my 'dark ages' which were reasonably brief as I was happily mis-allocating my student loan to Exo-Force sets before too long. You can't ever go wrong with giant robots! Since then I've mostly been picking up the odd large set - VW Camper, Sopwith Camel and Tower of Orthanc to name a few. For Christmas my girlfriend bought me the 7939 cargo train, which she may now regret as i'm slowly filling our spare room with trains and track and have retrieved the several kilos of old sets stored at my parents place. Anyway, nice to be here, happy building!