Section8

Great review! This set is an example of having the right idea, but than executing it poorly. The large landing pad wastes a lot of space and parts that could have gone towards making the rest of the modules better. I expect Lego will make a new version sometime in the future that will be on par with the newer playsets, specifically the Home One set. The carbonite chamber was cool, but not having a round floor bugged me. The rest of the modules were pretty under-designed and could've benefited from having more pieces to work with. I picked this set up for $50 online (somehow) while it was still available from Lego. Only at a price like that was it worth buying. I built it once, then broke it down for parts. I didn't realize it is worth so much now. I could sell it for a great return, but it does have great figs and some very useful parts, particularly for a town fan like myself.

The guy samuraiturtle is referring to is Winston Rothschild of Rothschild's Sewage and Septic Sucking Services. He always has funny slogans like that on his commercials. Anyways, that's a neat little truck. Those big pieces make for a nice tank, except for the end part. I definitely want to see it when you've added some stickers.

Great review! This set came out right before my dark age, but I was always in awe of the size of it compared to the other previous spaceships. Thanks to your review, I can now see that my admiration was misplaced. The ship seems empty, largely on account of the long, thin spine between halves. I also find the position of the two functional arms odd. The magnet seems useless with such a limited range of motion and the transparent disks are also in a tight spot. I've seen better designs for these functions on the other Exploriens sets. The low number of minifigs is disappointing, but typical for the large vehicles in each space theme. The Deep Freeze Defender, Galactic Mediator, Mission Commander, and Mega Core Magnetizer all have only 3 figs for ~450-500 pieces. It takes more energy to reach orbit than to maneuver while in orbit

A good mini-review, but a more in depth look at the sets and if/how they fit in together would be nice. It's worth mentioning that 1785 Crater Critters has a robot in the Spyrius color scheme, as well as one in Unitron colors, released in 1995. It's easy to overlook because it has no minifigs and an out of sequence set number. The Space Police II line did end in 1994 with regards to major new sets, but during that era sets were in catalogs and on sale for 2-3 years typically.

My friend bought this set and I built it for him. It's a pretty good looking set, but there are some major flaws. The cockpit spins loosely, which is both annoying and not accurate to the ship (unlike the B-Wing). Also, while I welcome the switch to more movie-accurate grey on the TIE wings, the underside of the wings are more visible than the tops at most angles and those are rather messy-looking. The tops and bottoms couldn't look 100% alike, but they could have been more alike. I recognize that making them alike may have compromised stability of the wings and made them weaker though. I guess this is something that can be modded. As for the figs, the new TIE Pilot helment is very nicely done, and another stormtrooper is always useful. I'd give the set a 3/5 and I will pick it up if I can get a deal on it; 50 USD is a bit much for the piece count and figs.

I think an EU subltheme would be a great idea. Especially once the CW series finishes and Lego wishes to keep SW sales up. I'm undecided on whether I would prefer many sets from a single EU property as an EU line (i.e., all Heir to the Empire sets, all Dark Forces/Jedi Knight sets) that changes to a new property every few years, or several sets from multiple properties relased at once (i.e. Ebon Hawk, Moldy Crow, and Scimitar Assault Bomber sets in the same year). Either way, we'd get more EU sets, which is good. Possible good choices would be (Knights of) The Old Republic, due to the popularity of the games as well as the new MMORPG coming out soon; Dark Forces/Jedi Knight due to the popularity and large amount of material to pull from; and Heir to the Empire series. For those of you questioning the appeal of those last two to younger kids, don't forget they were released over 15 years ago, so some of their fans are now Lego-buying parents. Personally I'd love a Thrawn fig, though I don't know what kind of set it should be in, an Ebon Hawk set, and a Moldy Crow set with Kyle Katarn, Jan Ors, and a few Dark Troopers. I think vehicles would be a better sell for EU sets than static locations; Lego currently seems to think so too.

Nice review, thanks. I appreciate your lineup of the trailer with other vehicles with hitches. I have a bunch of car-trailer sets from this era and the hitches are all at different heights. Its nice to see that the trailer is compatible with a few other sets. I received this set upon its release but have come to appreciate its design in recent years. The scissor lift is great with its ability to turn and be raised to different heights and configurations. I copied this design for one story elevators in my MOCs. The best part is the trailer, with its fold-out signs, fences, and lift that all compact and fit together perfectly for transport. The truck is a nice classic-town design, and I didn't know the printed panels were exclusive to this set. Thanks for that info! My older hinges haven't held up well to years of play, but all 6 of them together still have enough friction to hold the lift up. The transition to click hinges precludes more ingenious uses of the old hinges in sets like this (see this year's lift). In my experience the click hinges have so much friction you're just as likely to pull them off the trailer as raise the lift up. Both definitely have a place in the peice lineup; it's a shame Lego doesn't think so.

Yep, that's it. Very similar, but the wheelbase and tail lights are different. Still neat to see some uniformity in the designs.

Thanks for the great, comprehensive review! The jeep is a bit shabby but that is made up by the awesome helicopter. Certainly better than most of the other 'Generation 3' choppers (as you put it), like the one in 6396. These airline promo sets often eclipse many of the regular line sets from the same years. 1998 was full of <insert that tiresome argument> sets in the regular town line, which easily makes this one of the best sets of the year.

Nice review. It's a neat set that I didn't care for much back then (wasn't really into the Rescue themes) but would like to have now. There was a yellow car released of a very similar design as the Police car. I didn't realize there were clips on the back for the speed gun. Shame about your stickers; those old textured slopes are about the worst things ever for long-term sticker preservation, even more so than STAMPs.

My friend works at a TRU in the States and says its $55.

I got this set at Christmas one year. Quite surprised, as it wasn't available in stores in the US, only catalogue. It's a great set, one of the few classic town sets that isn't either a house or some more action-y theme (gas station, harbor, race track, etc). It fits in well in most settings, even a busy city would have a big restaurant near downtown. A bit expensive when you consider the piece/price ratio, but you get a lot of attention to detail that most other sets don't have. The ferns in the roof of the upper story, the glass entrance instead of a door, etc. The lights in the arch I believe are the only examples of this in an official set. A great review of a great set.

Great scene! I like the way your town is shaping up. I wouldn't mind seeing some close ups of that building on the corner too. It's nice to see someone building a town rather than a city. I like both, but cities seem to be the dominant form of settlements being built here on the T&T forums. I agree, I don't think I've ever seen any piece of construction equipment on a single axle trailer. Unless it's perfectly balanced, it would either put a lot of weight on the towing vehicle's hitch, or pull it up. Two axles seem reasonable for a small digger.

Your post intrigued me enough to dig out the set and check the heights. For the lighting bricks, the base is 2 plates high, and the lamp is 2 plates high. With a colored globe on top it is over 4 but less than 5 plates tall. The sign bricks are 5 plates high (1 - 2/3 bricks). With the light and a connector plate in it, it is 8 plates (2 - 2/3 bricks) tall. If you attached a 9V wire to the lamp instead of a single plate, it would be exactly 3 bricks tall as the 9V wired connector is 2 plates tall. You could also use one of the 1x2 electric plates to make it even. Hope this clears things up!

Right, they are not a standard height, and I'm pretty sure when you add the light and connector plate to the bottom they still aren't an even number of bricks tall. Same here. Not having a 1x4 light brick seems like a glaring omission, but I guess those were the most common version at the time of the set, while the 1x2 were less common. According to Peeron, the 1x2 light brick appeared in 6 System sets: 2 Basic sets (including 846), and 2 replacement parts packs, or 10 sets total, all in white. The 1 x 4 light brick with 2 lamps appeared in 18 sets, with 3 appearances in black; 2 appearances were just a parts pack. A few occurrences of each type were in the same sets (6481 L&S Construction Crew for one). Also, a question to a mod or anyone else: why doesn't this topic come up in search results for '846'? Other set reviews do when you search for just the set number. It was the lack of hits in a search for 846 that led me to create this review, as I thought it had not been reviewed.

Having grown up and traveled in the Midwestern US, I agree with you and understand where your inspiration came from. Your station looks like a lot of older gas stations in that part of the USA. Car washes in small towns are often separate structures unaffiliated with the gas station, if there is even one at all. Pavillions are a bit more common on newer stations. Only the newest service stations have both. Your MOC looks very good, like it was built in the 1930s-1960s and had a few upgrades to the pumps since then. I see ones that look very similar to yours when I pass through very small towns on country roads. Sometimes they have been converted to other uses, with the pumps gone but the building remaining.

What a great set! I appreciate you making all of the alternates, that is really some dedication you have there. Plus it is easier to see how they turn out compared to just images on the box. I didn't know this set had a clear plate for the table to represent glass, very nice. I'm interested in seeing how the stickers held up after 26 years in place. The application of stickers like that is unique out of all the sets I've seen. Perhaps you could snap a close-up pic when you have the time?

Wow, those are neat, especially the Shell one. I think those are banned in most of the USA; the largest I saw was a mail semi with three ~20ft trailers attached. But multiple full-size trailers are non-existant, at least in the heavily populated eastern half. I could see Lego making a truck with 2 trailers, but with same hitches on both so that if you bought more than one set, you could hook 3 or more trailers to one cab. On a somewhat related note, I'd like to see Lego make more modern road-rail. Specifically, I'm talking about what are called Roadrailers, where you have semi trailers connected by rail trucks at each end to form a train. Or how about 4-wide trailers? I'd take 6-wide too, but no wider. You can't put an 8-wide trailer on a 6-wide train car and have it look good. I don't mind 6-wide trailers, as several official sets even from the last decade pulled it off well, but the last round of 6-wide intermodal shipping containers were awful. Non-standard, cheaply constructed, etc. It wouldn't be so bad if they established a size/stacking standard and made ends with real doors, like the old 4-wide ones. I refused to buy any of the new sets with them because of this.

Great review, very thorough! I have this set and enjoyed it quite a bit. It always looked a bit out of place in my one-road town I had while growing up, though. The color scheme is simple but fits in with many other house sets that were available during that era. I give the set a 4/5, as it could have had a second minifig and there's nothing truly amazing about the set. I do like the lights on the front, a style I didn't see replicated in many other sets. I am surprised at the original price of $14. First, that explains why I received this set in the summer of 1990 for no reason (my family never bought me any of the more expensive sets, but a lot of the cheaper ones). Secondly, a few years later roughly the same price (a dollar or two cheaper, if I remember) would get you the smaller, less complex 6592 Vacation Hideaway. So it was a good deal back then. A single plate stuck up into the roof bricks makes a simple yet effective attic/loft, big enough to sleep a minifig.

He's definitely in Death Valley. The Classic-Town.net post says the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere, which is Death Valley (unless you're at the bottom of the Great Slave Lake in Canada ). Are you actually visiting these places, or just photoshopping them? A fun idea either way.

Indeed, the club car is very expensive as a set. The route I was considering was to just buy the critical parts (wagon base, windows, doors) and build my own. They wouldn't be copies of the club car, but designs like the American Amtrak's Superliner cars, with two full levels and the passages between them on the top level. The entry doors would be on the lower level, not the ends, and the lower level would be at least 5 bricks high to allow for a minifig to stand.

Nice work! They look very true to their film counterparts. I'm especially impressed with the V-35; I've been waiting for Lego to make an official model of that one, as it's pretty common.

Of course we'd like to see that (re)made. It was one of the best Trains sets ever made (along with the Metroliner). A whole train of club car-like cars would be neat, and would allow for the inclusion of more complete kitchen, bathroom, and sleeping areas. It'll be interesting to see what the new train series has, but Lego has been trending towards less extra cars and such and just making a few complete train sets and a few hobby train sets. That's a shame; I liked all the extra cars from the 80s-90s.

Right. An oil rig/platform would have a lot of playability with the helicopter and lifeboats, which is why I'm surprised that it hasn't been made before. I'd be interested to see how Lego made the drill string mechanism, as it is a bit complex. It would be cool if it were motorized too, but I could see how that wouldn't make much sense too. So it would be like the CN Tower in Toronto? That's not a skyscraper, it's a tower But it's a good idea, especially the revolving restaurant. I also wouldn't mind seeing a TV Studio Skyscraper, with different studios on different floors, like a news desk, kitchen for cooking shows, maybe a room in a house for a standard comedy show...

1. That may be, but I read somewhere that Lego stopped mass-producing sets with oil company logos after the Exxon Valdez accident. Hence why Octan was created. If I understand you, you're right, Lego doesn't need a licensing deal to make any of those sets. But they would provide an impetus for making them. I think the new wind turbine transport set was a direct result of the reaction to the Vestas set. 2. True. In fact many oil rigs don't even have an oil company logo visible on them, because they are too offshore to be seen by anyone but the workers, or the platform itself isn't owned by the company, but a third party. But for continuity's sake I wouldn't mind an Octan-colored and labeled oil platform (I also wouldn't mind a Shell one but I don't see that happening ). 3. In my opinion it is baffling that Lego has not made an oil platform before. Not only is it something that is basically begging to be made into a set, but Denmark is very close to the North Sea, which was really ramping up oil production at about the same time Lego was beginning its golden age (late 1970s to mid-80s). It also had licensing deals with many of the major producers in that area (Shell, Exxon, Maersk). An oil port would be a harder sell. Not only are tankers and refineries HUGE, but they are fairly boring, with few visible moving parts. Imagine the ship from 7994 City Harbour, but twice as long and most of it nothing but a flat deck. Not much play value there, and I'd rather have something else for an adult-oriented S@H exclusive. Again, skyscrapers are ubiquitous. So why hasn't Lego made a building more than 3 stories tall? And why are most of those that are 3 stories emergency services buildings? Indeed. I am waiting for an integrated City and Space line. Basically you have the Launch Pad and Mission Control as Town sets and a semi-realistic Moon/Mars base and spacecraft for the space line. A compromise somewhere between the early 1990s sets (exploration- rather than combat-focused) and the few actual Mars lines (not as futuristic-looking, but have aliens). Not only would that line be better than some of the recent Space lines, but it would free up room in the City line for other sets we want! And how!