Apparently everybody else felt the same way - nobody competed against her,
and she won with her first bid! Grrr. :)
This made me go "Arrrgh" and I went through a severe amount of moping.
This caused me to adjust my thinking about the set. I resolved to set my
maximum ceiling higher, and went after the one in Roy Gal's auction more
aggressively.
When the set arrived at my house, I spent my first day just admiring the
designs on the back, playing with the pieces, etc. I'd judge the set to be
a real winner just on those two features alone - great pieces, and a great
set of brain-frying designs on the back.
The next day, I built it. It took about four hours, with a lot of
interruptions and distractions. I purposely left the pieces unsorted (not
my normal behavior) to prolong the building process. There's only one
'first time' for a new set. :^)
Once the set was built, I had a lot of fun playing with moving gadgets,
whooshing the spaceship around, driving the moonbuggy around, etc. I was
irked by the fact that I couldn't get the hanger doors to close completely.
I've dismantled and rebuilt this section a few times to get a smooth
operation.
The spaceship included is cool! It's small (about 40 pieces) but quite
nifty. It has what I'd call gull-wings that can be raised or lowered. It
looks heavily armed - like a fast, mobile gunship. A light, fast, and
deadly attack craft. Groovy! If I had a web-page, I'd put a picture of
this spaceship up so other Space fans could try to make it, perhaps in
Unitron colors. It relies on a really strange windshield piece that wasn't
used again in Space sets until the Unitron Base was released in 1995. (I
should have mentioned this in the 'elements' portion of the review - the
piece looks like this:
(2 wide, four bricks tall, 2x1 studs on top, sits on 2x1 studs on bottom.
Found in transparent blue in the Unitron base.)
The moonbuggy is fun, sitting on four solid rubber balloon wheels. 'Buggy'
actually doesn't cover it -- this thing looks like a space commando jeep -
lightly constructed but menacing and fast. It's fun to roll around, and
cleverly designed. It's just a bare handful of pieces, of course, but a
lot of fun. Stick the phaser bazooka on the side of the buggy and its
intrinsic commando look makes even more sense.
And the base ... the base would make an excellent staging ground for a
pitched ground and space battle. Corridors to chase figures through;
moving parts to blow up; etc.
Ratings
Set Rating:Excellent
6987 contains a large number of interesting elements of the sort I really
like - big dome pieces, corridor pieces (including the rare
inner-and-outer-corner pieces, etc. These pieces make an Excellent
addition to a space-fan's collection.
As usual, you wind up wishing you'd gotten MORE ... more dome pieces,
more corridor elements, etc. Which could be remedied by buying more of
them, if this set was still in production ... sigh. About the only thing
holding me back from saying this was a must-have for piece fiends is that
(a) it's hard to get and (b) you need two to get a full complement of the
groovy pieces. For example - you get THREE of the gold outer-corner
corridor pieces. Why not four? But the pieces are wonderful nonetheless.
Model Rating:Excellent
You get a large, complicated base, a must-have spaceship (surprisingly cool
for such a small craft), and a clever moon-buggy. The pieces fit together
in that inimitable Blacktron fashion -- you can tell the designers were
LEGO geniuses, putting pieces together in novel and clever ways.
Not that I'm a Blacktron sycophant - I can tell you a lot of things I don't
like about some of the Blacktron sets. Ask me about my love/hate
relationship with the Invader someday. But to me, these sets represent a
high level of design competence that has never been surpassed in more
recent Space sets. And this, quite simply, is the best base The LEGO Group ever
made
for the LEGOLAND Space System.
My primary quibble with the design - the moving Sensor Dome is gratuitous.
It doesn't really need to move. It would make more sense to have moving
radar dishes on a stationary building than to have stationary disks on a
moving building .... And although I accept 'hand of god' designs from LEGO,
I'd be thrilled if teleportation wasn't necessary for a minifigure to move
from level to another in parts of the base.
The sheer size of the set is impressive, making it a good display model.
The spaceship that comes with the set is supurb. The alternate designs on
the back of the box are nothing short of breathtaking - more beautiful
designs by a team possessing great creative prowess. One alternate design
is a huge 'big brother' to the 6876 Blacktron Alienator and needs to be
seen to be believed. Another is reminiscent of the Blacktron II 6981
Aerial Intruder. Any of the alternate designs would have made an Excellent
set in its own right.
Playability Rating:Very-Good
The set has lots of positive points. Good models, neat 'gimmicks,' awesome
little minifigs, a large supply of interesting elements.
From a 'gee whiz' perspective, the moving parts of the base are impressive,
but the moving Sensor Dome possesses somewhat dubious long-term play value.
There's only so many times a kid would be willing to turn a handle to
extend and retract the Sensor Dome structure. However, these moving parts
might excite a child's imagination to try to make other structures with
moving parts. I tend to thing of moving parts like these as clever feats
of engineering for adults to admire, rather than an essential component of
a toy. (Janice Tomer, who bought one of these for her kid, might have a
different perspective).
A few minuses keep me from listing the Playability as Excellent. One is
that, when all is said and done, it's a base, and I think most kids would
rather swoosh a big spaceship around than play with a base. But maybe
that's just a personal bias. But I think a child would get more let's
pretend value out of a good old Galaxy Explorer or an M-Core Magnetizer
than out of a base. On the other hand, this set could make a good nucleus
for a space port, and your spaceships have to land somewhere. And, as I
mentioned above, a thing like this would make a good staging ground for a
LEGO space battle of the Star Wars-ish 'the stormtroopers invade' type. In
the end I'd expect that the base would be quickly dismantled and lots of
other interesting structures would arise in its place. The ship is cool
enough that the kid might keep it built and whoosh it around for hours.
Elements
The set is notable for its use of octagonal corridor elements and large
dome pieces. These elements were brand new back in 1988. A giant gold
dome corner is joined by two black dome walls. Two of the rare
inner-corner corridor elements are included (in black) as well as three
gold outer-corner pieces. 6 black and 3 gold corridor wall segments
complete the corridor.
Also of interest are two large pylon elements of the sort used in monorail
sets. These pylons were also introduced in 1988, although featured more
prominently in the Futuron monorail released that same year.
Two long yellow rail elements (not train rails - theses are 1x16 plates
with indented with regularly spaced holes; these holes can be gripped by a
toothed gear for movement) are used in conjunction with two special 'geared
tooth in a brick' elements to raise, lower, or extend portions of the base.
The set bristles with a large panapoly of antenna and 'spacish' elements.
A large black 8x8 radar dish is joined by two yellow 4x4 dishes, nine 2x2
ruby dishes, nine ruby antennas, and numerous ruby 1x1 cylinders.
Three yellow hoses add the typical Blacktron flair, as do two 3x6
double-wing pieces in yellow. This is one of two sets to feature a 4x6
gold plate (also found in set 918).
Minifigure tools in the set: a wrench, a walkie-talkie, a big
phasor-bazooka/"camera", and a black metal-detector (usually in grey).
Decorated elements: The set utilizes several black 2x2 and 1x2 slope
bricks decorated as computer keypads with rows of yellow and orange
buttons. Four 1x2 and two 1x2 yellow tiles provide more keypads.
Historical note - the Blacktron line was interesting in that it was
released in two consecutive years. 1987 saw the introduction of two
spaceships and a wheeled ground vehicle. 1988 saw a 6876 Alienator as well
as the Message-Intercept Base.
What makes the '2nd year sets' interesting is that, while sharing a common
theme and visual appeal, the 2nd year sets use elements not available the
year before - specifically the octagonal corridor and dome elements. Check
the canopy of 6876 Alienator, released in 1988. As a canopy it uses an
octagonal corridor element which was unavailable the year before. This is
a nice design touch that has since been used over and over. It's also one
that might have fit in well with the prior 1st-year sets.
I think it's interesting that radically new elements were integrated into
an existing line with great success and thematic unity. Or were they all
designed at the same time, but with the new elements forbidden from the
first year sets for production reasons? I'd love to know .... I like to
think that the first year sets were designed separately, and it's
interesting to ponder how they might have differed had the new elements
been available a year earlier.
Reviewer Information
|
Reviewer Name
|
Age (at review)
|
E-Mail
|
WWW
|
Favorite Theme
|
|
Jeff Thompson
|
28
|
jeff@teubner.com
|
---
|
Space, Castle, Pirate
|
I am primarily a set collector concentrating on Space and Castle,
but am also very element-oriented, with a strong interest
in collecting new and unusual pieces to build large creations of
my own design.
Copyright
This review is Copyright 1995, by the author as named above. This
information may be reprinted, provided (a) all information in the
document is published in full, and (b) no profit is made, directly or
indirectly, by the publishing of this material. All other rights
reserved.
This is a fan created web site. LEGO® is a registered trademark of The LEGO Group, which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse this site.
All views expressed in the reviews on this site are those of the review author, and do not necessarily represent the views of Joshua Delahunty or the University of California.
Set names and photos are copyrighted materials owned by The LEGO Group, used according to its Fair-Use Policy. Set photo scans courtesy of Pause Magazine.
Background imagery supplied by and Copyright © Todd Lehman. Used with permission.
3-D Element bitmaps supplied by and Copyright © James Jessiman. Used with permission.
All product line and theme banner graphics hand-drawn (not scanned) and Copyright © 1996 Joshua Delahunty.
Send comments on these pages to the editor at dulcaoin@alumni.cse.ucsc.edu.
![[6987 Set Photo]](../pix/6987.jpg)
