"Jim Spanfeller" (awesomeaustinv)
04/12/2020 at 17:33 • Filed to: Legolopnik
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"Jim Spanfeller" (awesomeaustinv)
04/12/2020 at 17:33 • Filed to: Legolopnik | 9
| 5 |
I think we can all agree that the large scale car model sets that Lego makes are wonderful things. But did you know that the first sets like this came out back in 1975? That was when Lego first introduced the short-lived Hobby Series, Lego’s first theme attempting to replicate real vehicles in detail. Most of them (with the exception of an F1 car) were even licensed! Three of them were antique cars, with a 1913 Cadillac (pictured above), a 1909 Rolls Royce, and a 1926 Renault.
There were also a couple of motorcycle models, with a police Harley Davidson and a Norton motorcycle.
Then there was a Thatcher-Perkins locomotive, a 1970's Formula-1 car, and the U.S.S. Constellation.
And that’s about it. The line didn’t end up being a huge success, as not only were some of the models prohibitively expensive for many people at the time, but a lot of kids also just weren’t interested in things like antique cars. So it only lasted a couple years, and nowadays these sets are a bit rare. However, they were very advanced for the time and despite the more limited variety of parts available in the 70's, they managed to capture a surprising amount of detail.
Lego would go on to revisit the idea with the Model Team series in the late 80's, and in the 2010's they started releasing models of real cars in the Creator Expert series. But it all started with these often-forgotten sets from the 70's.
UserNotFound
> Jim Spanfeller
04/12/2020 at 17:52 |
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Wow the USS Constellation, that’s pretty cool!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constellation_(1854)
Matt
> Jim Spanfeller
04/12/2020 at 18:37 |
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Hi. I’m not interested in cars, but I just wanted to say you have a nice blog. On mobile, it lo ads fast and there aren’t annoying ads taking up screen space.
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Jim Spanfeller
> Matt
04/12/2020 at 19:05 |
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Oh, thanks! I like being an author on Oppositelock, I think it’s one of the best places on the internet.
shop-teacher
> Jim Spanfeller
04/12/2020 at 21:48 |
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I had no idea these were a thing. I love how well the detail is done on some of these, despite using very basic Lego pieces. That F1 car is dead sexy!
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Jim Spanfeller
> shop-teacher
04/12/2020 at 23:08 |
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Definitely. The motorcycles are some of my favorites, since they use a bunch of building techniques that are considered “illegal” nowadays. The engines are built by pushing plates only halfway down, giving the appearance of cooling fins, and some details are made by sticking tiles between studs or between the tubes and sides of the bottoms of plates. They really went all out on these things!