Rebuilding the Past - 6525 Blaze Commander

I have now, for a long time, been in an era I would call "the slow rebuild," contrast with "the Great Take-Apart" of 2004. As a kid, my LEGO sets were largely kept in their "official" form, and though they would get dismantled for an ad hoc build, they were typically rebuilt. Until, finally, I was an edgy 17-year-old* and decided to take it all apart and build my own things for good.

Well, that didn't last forever. A very select few (maybe three) sets were never demolished and eventually, there was a rebuild, a set here, a set there--starting around 2008, when I wanted my castles back and was completing my Royal Knight collection.

From there, it was somewhat inevitable that the sets of my childhood would see their native forms restored. The rebuilding slowed around 2012 or so--mostly because I thought I'd rebuilt all the sets that I'd want to bother rebuilding.

Turns out, I was not QUITE right.

Chief Castor has an encounter with two unusual fire hazards.

The photo above shows the recent fruits of this never-quite-finished endeavour: 6525 Blaze Commander and two copies of 7111 Droid Fighter. Each had its own slight elements of distinction, even if neither set was ever an All-Star (by which analogy, by the way, it is important to note that rebuilding a set isn't quite the same as voting it into the Hall of Fame--some rebuilt sets might not even make the Hall of Kinda Okay). We may talk about the Droid Fighter later; for today, we're looking at the Chief.

6525 Blaze Commander was only my first Fire set if you are willing to discount 6614 Launch Evac-1 because it was a Launch Command set. Not actually having any other Launch Command (a fantastic theme I wish I had more of) and never getting much in the way of its 1999 successor, Spaceport, Launch Evac-1 really was more of a firefighting set in my collection, and it had both a hand-held hose and a nozzle up top, whereas Blaze Commander was just a truck with a fire extinguisher in the back (and Launch Evac-1 had two of those).

On the other side of Blaze Commander's arrival, I eventually got 6407 Fire Chief, which had the exact same fig driving a slightly crappier truck (1998-2000 were not good years for Town designs), albeit one that had a fire hose (though no gear, which Blaze Commander did have).

Fire Chief Castor Cyber

So Blaze Commander was something of a forgettable set, sandwiched between two other small firetrucks, and while the character of your generic Town figs is what you make of them, Castor Cyber (as he would eventually be called on paper, since he was never really named anything in-game or in stories) was not a fortunate one, as some of his predecessors (or successors) were, who developed a story and a character and a mythology.

If Blaze Commander is a boring set and its minifig has no distinguishing features, why rebuild it? The answer for me is frequently that "I love catering to my nostalgia," but there is a bit more that could be said. While not a major player in my old Town games, Blaze Commander was the only Town set I'd owned before 1998 (it had been a birthday present in 1996) that had not been rebuilt in my collection--indeed, it was my oldest unbuilt set. As the "slow" part of the moniker "The Slow Rebuild" suggests, I don't spend many, many hours with my LEGO these days and I can't claim to be a great builder. Such use of my collection as I do have tends to focus on storytelling, mostly around my various webcomics.

Blaze Commander may not be an exciting set, but it's a good background set. It's typical of its era, mid-1990s Town sets, which is home base for the Town figs of Android Files and basically what I mean when I say "Townland." It's the only true classic Town firefighter set I own (I date Fire Chief much too late to count as "classic Town," which I see as lasting up until 1996, after which Town focuses either on fantastic subthemes, like Outback and Res-Q, or eventually devolves into Town Jr).

So keep an eye out--you never know if it might get itself a cameo!


*I have never, at any stage of my life, been "edgy."

1720 Cactus Canyon

I've alluded in the past (not that I expect anyone to have any readers left, let alone any who remember the particulars of three-year-old posts) that my first true Town set was 1720 Cactus Canyon. It wasn't my first set (it was my seventh), nor was it the first one I would use in the Town world (that would be a Basic set, 525 or a Fabuland set), but it was and remains one of my favourite Town sets. It was also, on a note of trivia, the first set I ever received the same year that it was released, since I got this Christmas 1994.

For those keeping score at home, 1720 Cactus Canyon was released in 1994 and was an amalgam of three other sets: 1740, 1741, and 1742, which were also released in 1994. In that respect, it was much like some of the other sets of the decade, which were released in some countries as polybags under one set number and in others as boxed sets under another. Cactus Canyon has a single instruction book for the three subsets and, growing up, I never really thought of the set as anything other than a complete unit, though I was sort of vaguely aware that it wasn't QUITE a normal set--at the very least, unlike most of my sets, its picture never appeared in the catalogues of the era, a fact it shared with the polybags.


Each unit of the set has a minifigure and a vehicle. Starting with the smallest, we have a kayak (though the paddle is not a kayaker's paddle)--a very simple build indeed, with a grand total of seven elements required.

A little bit larger, certainly in the piece-count department, is the dune-buggy. This subset also includes two natural elements: a grey falcon/hawk piece and a bush--the titular cactus, I always assumed. Growing up in Canada, "dune buggies" weren't exactly a regular part of my lexicon, so this vehicle was generally just referred to as a car or possibly thought of as a four-wheeler or ATV.

Speaking of things with four wheels, the largest of the three subsets has the real highlight of the set, the truck. A fairly standard mid-1990s LEGO truck, this has always been one of my favourite vehicles in my LEGO city. It's looks a bit chunky compared to some more contemporary vehicles--and quite a bit smaller, since it hails from the 4-stud-wide standard era, but it's still pretty vroomable (the driven equivalent of swooshable).

In most sets I'd consider it a fairly minor point to bring up the minifigure accessories, especially in a theme where these are unlikely to be weapons--because who really needs to army-build guys holding walkie-talkies? In this case, however, because of how early Cactus Canyon falls in the timeline of my collection, almost all of the items pictured above were significant. With the exception of the oar (I had two in a Pirate set), each of these were the very first of their kind in my collection. The pickaxes and shovel would remain the only ones until the Adventurers theme in 1998--and it is worth noting as a sidebar that before the Adventurers were released, I did use this set to supply my town with its very first archaeologists or paleontologists, because, clearly, that's why they had picks and shovel, right?

And, of course, there were the minifigs. At this point I'll note that my choice of reviewing this set isn't pure nostalgia; it's nostalgia that's been awakened by the recent drafting of these three minifigs as the main characters in my new webcomic series (coming soon to the Internet near you). The exact characterisation of these three changed over the years, but as the first Town figs in my collection--figs who were, helpfully, not limited by a job-specific uniform, they filled many roles in many games.

From the left we have Carson Smith (who drove a car--note too the facial resemblance to the Smiths of Gator Landing and Speed Trackers), Nick Townson, and Larry, aka "Boaty" Townson. I'll only say this about the "inventiveness" of the names: yes, one guy from a Town set has a boat and was named Boaty Townson. Notably, he and the other Townson here have the same head: it was a convention in my Legoverse and my brothers that Town figs with the same head belonged to the same family. For the longest time, these were my only figs with that head, which a point of some soreness to me, because I thought the head was really cool... and my brother had five of them.

The roles they'll be playing in my upcoming series won't be 100% identical to what they would have been in my youthful LEGO games, which is probably just as well because what appeals to a 12-year-old boy is rarely universally appealling, but it is based on them to an extent. Anyone paying attention will note that nostalgia is a key element in why I create webcomics and why I run this blog. So there was really no competition for main characters when I decided to make a new comic.

In case anyone is wondering, the working title for the series is "Android Files."

Repainting

LEGO building, like most artistic endeavours, is a skill that one generally builds by imitating what other people have done, and for most LEGO fans the first master they study is the LEGO Company itself. Most MOCing techniques in a budding builder are based on what he's been taught to use in a LEGO set and when a builder steps out for the first time to build a MOC, the results are often close to official sets.

While I would like to think that I'm a bit beyond simple imitation of what goes on in official sets, I still do the occasional "paint job." I'm calling it that because the finished product is an official set, but painted with different-coloured pieces. This car is the most recent example:



Like a lot of paint jobs, this revisited car is a smaller vehicle. I tend to enjoy this scale because the smaller size makes it easier to find the pieces required in another colour to replicate the original. It's also a scale that LEGO does well. With most buildings they either have to skimp on parts or on size to keep the set's piece-count down to a manageable level, but this is not generally the case with vehicles.

The main reason for repainting this police car as a fire chief's car was the fact that I had the red 3x4 slope with wheel-wells and it even had the fire sticker on it, a relic from 6525 Blaze Commander, one of my earliest Town sets. I also had a spare 4x6x2 sloped cockpit. Between the desire to put both these parts to use and having more wheels and tires than I'll EVER use (true of most LEGO fans), this car fell together without much difficulty. It helps that it doesn't require any rare pieces.

Favourite Sets: 6598 Metro PD Station

I've blogged before about 6598 Metro PD Station, the flagship of Town's Rescue theme from 1996. In that post, I wrote about Metro PD as one of a couple of mid-1990s Police Stations that I wanted as a kid, but never got. It was "one that got away."

But no more! Thanks in no small part to this blog, my brother got me Metro PD for Christmas, and rather than finding myself disappointed with the set as over-hyped now that I'm an adult, it more than lived up to expectations.



Part of the attraction of Metro PD is that it comes with a full range of crime-fighting vehicles: air, sea, and land are all covered. The helicopter is on the smaller side, although it's rather standard for 1990s LEGO copters. I had 1782 Discovery Station and my brother had 6328 Helicopter Transport, both of which had similarly sized copters.

Particularly when compared with these helicopters of a more similar vintage, Metro PD's copter holds up well in terms of design, and it's mostly-black colour scheme is pretty badass. Unfortunately, however, the way the copter is put together is a little bit less stable than what I remember of Discovery Station's. Even though I haven't had it quite a month, and I haven't really played with it anywhere to the extent that I would as a kid, it's shattered on me a couple times.



By way of contrast, though, the boat is really solid. It has one police officer seemingly assigned to--one of the officers in vests with white arms, wearing a white cap, making him match exactly the two officers of 4012 Wave Cops, which came out the same year. It's a two-seat boat and an extra life jacket for whoever else rides along. In contrast to the helicopter, which still holds up well in design, though it is small, after all these years, the boat is quite blocky. My brother got 4641 Speed Boat for Christmas, and the differences between the two were striking. Although Speed Boat was only a one-man boat, it was large and powerful-looking and had rounded pieces. Next to it, this simply looked... clunky, though that was rather nostalgically attractive.



Even more dramatically demonstrative of the changes LEGO's Town scale has gone through was the jail van, particularly since I also got 4441 Police Dog Van for Christmas. Granted, there's roomed in the latter for the dogs, but even so it is a full order of magnitude smaller. Which isn't to say I disliked the older van... but it does feel *very* small.



That takes us out of the vehicles for the set--there are also two motorcycles, but while I love classic LEGO motorcycles, there is little to comment on with them--and back to the station proper.

Well, not quite.

As it happens, there are two separate baseplates in this set, each with their own building. Both baseplates have a dock on the side for the boat, which is presumably the means of transport between the two--hence the backseat and the extra life jacket. The smaller baseplate is a prison cell, with a tunnel already prepared for Jailbreak Joe to break out through.



And that brings us to the *real* Police Station. It's already been a fairly substantial set at this point, and there's still the crown jewel to look at. It's a good size, and had more going on in it than I expected. At the same time, however, it was a more juniorised build than most of the set. The large window pieces didn't bother me, but a lot of the structure is just 1x2x5 bricks. The final result is a well-designed playset that looks pretty good from the front. My main quibbles are the wobbly design caused by the post-brick constructions and the green "carpeting" brought on by the baseplate.

One of the most exciting parts of the police station, for me, was the evidence room at the top, which has a wanted poster... of one of the guys in 6563 Gator Landing. I posted about that set close to a year ago (see here) and I reflected there that these guys were probably supposed to be thieves or something of that nature--something that I'd never cottoned on to at all during my childhood. This poster would seem to confirm that suspicion.



Well, the poster could come from the captain's office too. The copy of the set my brother found did not include the instructions, which he printed off from an online copy instead. This was more than functional, but it means that I couldn't actually see the print on the poster when building the set. It's not a major problem, since it would only mean swapping the tiles. As you can see in the immediately foregoing picture, the alternative is a Jailbreak Joe wanted poster. It makes sense to me, though, that since he's already caught, that the one in the evidence room is the guy living large in the swamp.

Wanted posters aside, the captain's office is my favourite room in the station. This is partly because it's the most finished room in the station and partly because I really like the city map behind the captain's chair. It's an awesome design that I didn't know came with the set.



There are also a few nice details down in the reception area. I always wanted the keyboard and monitor pieces to the computer, and they tended to elude me over the years as a general rule. Now, of course, they're amusing to look back on a "old" technology.

I was also impressed with the coffee-maker. It's a very simple build, but it's strikingly effective, and even with all the new parts that have come out in the last sixteen years, it's not really in need of updating.

All told, I was still impressed with Metro PD Station after fifteen years of it being "one that got away" and even against the best contemporary sets it holds up fairly well, the main exception being the boat, and secondarily the van. It was a lot of fun to open a box and have a whole pile of old grey, and I really appreciated the overall smaller size of pieces. Even with the early-onset juniorisation of the station, there were a lot more pieces in the 1x1 plate range (including 1x1 plates themselves) than in more newer sets. It was an awesome Christmas.

4441 Police Dog Van

One of the sets that I received for Christmas was part of the 2012 line-up of new City sets, though in this case "City" is a misnomer because the "Cops and Robbers" theme has in fact left the city and taken to the forests. This has been cause for excitement in portions of AFOL-dom because of the new bears found in a couple of sets, and because moving into "State Trooper" territory is one of most drastic moves that LEGO's police force has ever made.



As you can see, though, set 4441 Police Dog Van does not come with a bear. What id *does* come with is a "State Trooper/Sheriff/Not-Mountie" in a van with separate compartments for dogs and criminals (the dogs have a far more finished accommodation), a car for the criminal, and the entrance to an abandoned gold mine.

Of the three major components of the set, the gold mine is the least interesting, though the parts that comprise it are excellent and the bee/wasp's nest is a nice, albeit simple, touch. The dog van is better: a robust design with my first set of the new, larger tires for the now-classic wheel-well, and a good assortment of parts. The main problem with the van that I've noted is that, depending on the exact alignment of parts, opening the door to the dogs' compartment can pop off the roof over the driver.

That leaves the car, which I found to be a lot more fun than I expected from the pictures. If spaceships are swooshable, what are vehicles? I'm going to go with "vroomable," which is exactly what this car is. It's like a badass version of 8402 Sports Car, which I also own and find quite vroomable.

Unfortunately, the felon driving this presumably stolen car is a bit lacklustre; although I like the grey jacket-over-striped-prison shirt torso, one begins to run out of uses for criminals in striped shirts and tuques quickly, and after getting two in the Advent Calendar right before Christmas, I was doubly disinterested in him. Fortunately, it was easy to return his car to the dealership where another fig got a great deal, and the "State Trooper" fig is more than awesome enough to make up for him.

6546 Slick Racer

After getting a reasonable haul of LEGO for Christmas yesterday, it seems appropriate to look back at a Christmas set of yore: way back in 1997, 6546 Slick Racer became the very first LEGO set I received in my stocking. It was not the first LEGO set I'd received for Christmas--that set was five years old by the time Slick Racer came into my collection--but it was the first set I received in my stocking, a sign of the fact that LEGO had definitely become the central toy of my childhood, presaging the growth of my collection to come. Indeed, if I were to pick a time when I went from having LEGO a child to buying LEGO with all available funds as a slightly older child and teenager, I'd have said 1998 was the first year of the new era. As a result, Slick Racer is poised on the cusp between my very early LEGO era and my Golden Age.



Despite an abiding interest in LEGO race cars as a child, I never acquired more than three or so in my collection, and Slick Racer was the earliest of the three. The others were 6519 Turbo Tiger from the year 2000's rather paltry line-up, and 2963 Extreme Racer from 1998's eXtreme Team. Slick Race was also my favourite of the three, the perennial winner of any race. This favouritism was due, in part, to its status as the earliest racer in my collection, and also because of a bias towards Octan.

Octan looms large in my LEGO Town imagination, despite the fact that this set and a handful of torsos were all that I possessed that were connected to that venerable logo. They were a multi-business corporation that manufactured cars, sold gas, sponsored races, and produced millionaires. Looking back, I would say now that they were a strange juxtaposition of greedy mega-corporation and squeaky-clean Town company in my LEGO games.

3367 Space Shuttle

It's getting to be about a month, maybe more, since I made an order at Shop@Home to buy a set that was apparently out of stock when I last visited the LEGO Store, back in early September. That set was 3367 Space Shuttle, the first NASA-based LEGO shuttle I've managed to acquire, though LEGO has been making them for decades.



As a $30 set (USD), the Space Shuttle is a fairly good size, large enough to adequately capture a sense of weightiness. I admit that I thought it was a bit expensive when I was buying it online, because all the pictures of it made it look a bit smaller than it actually is, but I was convinced once the set arrived and I put it together. Among other things, this swooshable ship has *heft*. It's also a fairly good parts pack: other than the specialized cockpit piece, there really isn't anything in this set that I would be averse to having multiple copies of.



As a playable design, Space Shuttle is composed of a cockpit and a cargo hold containing a Canadarm and a deployable satellite. The satellite is less complex than some we've seen in the past, but surprisingly cute. (I'm particularly thinking of this one from the Spaceport theme of 1999, the last major minifig-scaled series of NASA/Space sets--though there have been some impressive standalone and non-minifig sets in the years since). The cargo hold might be more fun if it had room to stow extra astronauts or aliens, but the room is there, if one leaves the satellite in space--also if one rooms the Canadarm.



As for minifigs... well, no one is going to buy this Space Shuttle as an army builder, but since I already have two Spaceport astronauts and two Launch astronauts from the Dacta 30 Minifigures (9293 Community Workers), I'm not really in the market to get more astronauts anyway. And as far as getting an astronaut at all went, I was quite happy that the Astronaut that DOES come with this set has the new "Space Police III" helmet, as well as the "Atlantis" bodysuit.

4012 Wave Cops

It's been mentioned once or twice before that I like Police LEGO, that in fact it's my favourite Town sub-theme. Today's set was the second Police set I acquired, after 6625 Speeder Trackers.



4012 Wave Cops came out the same year, 1996, as Speed Trackers, and thus belongs to the same "generation" of LEGO policemen: black-and-white vehicles with trans-medium-blue glass pieces, and the yellow star logo on a black-and-white shield. And a lot of guys wearing sunglasses.

I bought Wave Cops in the summer of 1997, one of the earlier sets that I bought with my own money, and in the very early days of getting LEGO more than three or four times a year. The fact that this set was a Police set specifically is 100% why I picked it up, and the fact that it expanded the Police force beyond the highways of my LEGO town to the seas was an added bonus.

Looking at the set itself, however, the fact that this is a boat is hardly incidental. In fact, it is not generally categorized as a part of the Rescue (Police) subtheme, but as part of the "Really Floats" sub-theme. LEGO released three Really Floats sets in 1996, and Wave Cops with the mid-range of the three, with two minifigs.



Not that this set has a lot of pieces. As one can tell from the pictures, it's not that the piece selection is bad... it's just that the hull accounts for a LOT of the set. Since the purpose of the set is to "Really Float" (which it does), it's hard to criticize this set on the grounds of juniorisation, yet that's exactly the sort of problem the set would give a builder: what, if anything, can you build out of its pieces that would not be another Police boat?

Nonetheless, this didn't strike me as a bad thing back in 1997, since I wasn't in the habit of taking my sets apart. Officers George and Anthony Smith (one should note a family resemblance, facially, to the Smiths in Speed Trackers) rarely rode actual waves--I think they may have had two excursion into the bathtub--but this hardly fazed them, or me.

Over the years, Wave Cops would be pushed into the background of my LEGO memory, as newer and more wonderful sets with more interesting characters pushed forward, and the gimmick of "Really Floats" wasn't enough to compete. Nonetheless, it was the largest "ship" in my Town fleet for many years--indeed, until I got another Really Floats ship in the late 2000s, and it retains a nostalgic quality simply for being a Police set of that era, and a part of my collection from that era.

Favourite Sets: 6625 Speed Trackers

In my last "Ones That Got Away" post, I made reference to the fact that I *did* manage to acquire a number of Police sets over the years, just never a police station. One of those sets is today's "favourite set."

6625 Speed Trackers was the first Police set I owned, and it's one of my earliest Town sets (#4, I think). I got it during the summer of 1996 (the year it was released) on a roadtrip to Montana with my parents and one of my brothers. That was a very traumatic LEGO experience for my brother, as he lost the head to the Royal Knight king he purchased, but my policemen made the trip back to Alberta in one piece each, and their vehicles likewise.



Both vehicles are quite lovely. I've always had a thing for the old motorcycles, and this would ultimately prove to be the only one I would ever get in a set. I would manage to get one in the mid-2000s (minus one side of the handlebar), but for most of my formative LEGO years, this was the only two-wheeled motorcycle I owned, making it even cooler than it perhaps deserved. The car was also much appreciated, and I think it is still a nice design, if a bit smaller than a lot of the more recent cars. Its main deficiency is that the driver cannot wear a hat--but, as you can see, LEGO helpfully didn't give him one.

This driver was more than just a mere patrol officer in my Town. Since I never acquired a police station, or even a larger set with a police chief fig, the hat-less man in black with this set became known as Chief Samuel Smith, and his motorcycling partner became his brother, the ace detective Officer Gregory Smith. As the Smith name (which also appeared with a couple of the Gator Landing figs) may tip you off, I wasn't particularly inventive with names, and the fact that these two characters got full names is indicative of the high favour they enjoyed.

I would eventually get a real police chief when I got 9293 Community Workers, but that was the better part of a decade later, and much too late to knock Chief Smith off the top of the totem pole--besides, I had two towns, and someone had to be chief of police in Paridisaville (that would be the new guy's post). Eventually, Chief Smith got a new uniform, while retaining his head, so I'm not sure who's actually in the picture here. Perhaps the Chief still likes to ride the beat now and again, for old time's sake.

The Ones That Got Away-Part 3

After the two previous "Ones That Got Away" posts about Imperial Guards and Space Police (ii), given their overlap in era and the fact that I said I liked themes associated with law and order, and 'the good guys,' it will perhaps come as no surprise that today's post in that vein is about Town's Police theme.

Well, perhaps I should define what I mean by "Police theme." LEGO has never been as clear-cut with its Town sets as to what belongs in each theme as it has in Castle, for example. Back in the era I'm thinking about, Police sets were lumped (at least in my catalogues) with firemen to make the "Rescue" theme, and around 1995 it also included some Coast Guard/Life Guard types. In the 2000s, police sets were either part of the broader "World City" theme or its successor "City."

All the same, I think its clear what sets I mean when I say "Police theme." LEGO has usually had a whole range of Police sets, from small motorcycle up through larger car, helicopter, and mobile command centre, to police station. And over the years, I managed to accumulate quite a few of these--except for a police station. Hence the inclusion of Police sets in this series. Despite the vast number of Police stations that LEGO has released over the years, I have never acquired one.

Unlike more bracketed off themes like Imperial Guards or Space Police (ii), the perennial appearance of Police sets means that I never settled on a single police station as my utter favourite. Nonetheless, there were a couple that held my attention most in the 1990s, and remain my nostalgic favourites.

The first of these was 6398 Central Precinct HQ. Due to its 1993 release, it was around for a few years in catalogues, during my formative, catalogue-staring, years. It was a nice, large set, with four vehicles, including a helicopter and one of those awesome-cool motorcycles, and five minifigs, including Jailbreak Joe, who held a special status in my LEGO wants as the single Town bad guy. (It did not occur to me, apparently, that I could make someone else a bad guy... so for quite a few years my police had nothing worse to deal with than natural disasters or traffic violators, unless non-Town figs invaded.)

However, the Central Precinct did not manage to secure utter domination in my heart, because those years were not particularly Town-centric. Pirates and Castle held sway, and when I started becoming more Town-interested around 1996, another Police station was released--one which would vie with the Central Precinct for my attention.

6598 Metro PD Station had better pictures than the Central Precinct, and came out just as I was getting more interested in Town generally, and Police specifically. Besides, it also had a helicopter, and not one but TWO motorcycles! It also had a boat and jailwaggon, albeit at the expense of the car and jeep that came with the Central Precinct. Besides, it had more minifigs (8 vs. 5), and still included Jailbreak Joe! About the only thing that Central Precinct still had going for it was that I liked the look and shape of the station better, and I preferred its white helicopter to the black one with Metro PD.

Of course, you already know the ending of the story. It was a moot point which one I wanted more, because I never got either. A new Police station, with green windows (a fact my 11 year old self did not approve) came out in 1998, and although I would have settled for it, I never got that one either... and so on down to the present. I would have been happy to have settled with a mobile command centre, but I never got 6348 Surveillance Squad either. Back in the day, I thought that was a pretty amazing set, with its motorcycle and computer-filled command centre.

Although I never acquired a police station--not even a mobile one--my police force was a formidable force, with quite a fleet of vehicles. In addition to being a list slightly too long to mention here, a few of those sets will appear as "Favourites," so I'll leave off discussing them for now. Suffice it to say, however, I did remain forever without one of those cool motorcycles.

Favourite Sets: 6563 Gator Landing

Another of the ongoing topics that I want to visit with this blog is that of my favourite sets. Given my age, and when I started collecting LEGO, these are probably going to be sets from the mid-1990s and later. Anything earlier than that would probably be more appropriate to the Ones That Got Away series--in other words, this series will focus on sets that I actually own.

The first set I will look at in this series is 6563 Gator Landing. Released in 1996, this set is something a precursor to the Outback line of sets that came out the following year. I picked it up in the summer of 1997, when I found it on sale with a couple other sets at the "Real Canadian Superstore." Even before I got it, I thought it was a pretty cool looking set, but the fact that it makes my favourite list now is more a testament to 13 years of ownership nostalgia than anything else.

The main reason I've selected Gator Landing as my first set is because I recently rebuilt it, after having it in pieces for over six years (like much of my LEGO, it is slowly reassuming set-built form). Consequently, it's been on my mind of late, and as I've been hunting down pieces and rereading instructions, I've come to appreciate it all the more.



As a set, Gator Landing seems to be based in a swamp, or at least a lagoon or something of that nature, since it has a hut built on stone (well, grey) pylons, with a swinging rope bridge to a rock promontory. The presence of the lone bush piece suggests that there is land at hand, and the alligator gives the set its moniker.



In addition to the landing proper, the set includes three vehicles: one each from land, sea, and sky. The sea vehicle is this hydrofoil craft, piloted by a stetson-wearing Townlander in that familiar green vest, with storage for two suitcases in the back.



In hindsight, I think this truck is my favourite of the three vehicles. It's a cool looking red and black jeep/truck, with my first set of yellow tire-wells (indeed, my only set for a number of years, in any size), and a design aesthetic similar to the truck in my oldest Town set, 1720 Cactus Canyon.



Although the jeep claims my favouritism now, the seaplane was the real reason I wanted this set back in 1997. My brother had the first airplane in the house, from an Outback set, and I was green with jealousy. After all, planes could fly--and who can deny the swooshability factor? I certainly couldn't, and the big reason I wanted this set was so that I could have a plane too. I always felt a little bit cheated that it was a seaplane, rather than one with wheels, but I like the black, red, and yellow colour-scheme, and it's still plenty swooshable.



Boasting all of a chair and a glass mug, with a half-high door and more roof than walls, this little shack may not seem like much, but back in the day it was a millionaire's palace. My LEGO town had a severe shortage of housing, and this was the first, and for a long time only, Town set I had that came with a building--and a building that wasn't related to business. As such, it was a sauve waterfront estate in the midst of the cruder, basic brick houses I had built otherwise out of Freestyle sets.



Of course, the possession of three vehicles and a waterfront estate wasn't all the evidence I had that these three characters were millionaires: there was also the conspicuous presence of money in this set. How I missed it then, I don't know, but it looks pretty clear that this is a hideout in the bayou/swamp somewhere for... robbers, smugglers... someone apparently unsavoury. That never once occurred to me. For whatever reason, these three fellows, Messrs. Smith, Smith, and Octan, were millionaires who happened to carry a lot of cash on hand. In suitcases.