Classic-Town.net

What a great time to enjoy some Sizzling Summer Fun!  Do the dog days of summer have you hidden in a shady place under the air conditioning vent?  – not to fret.  Do you own any LEGO Town/City Leisure, IslandXtreme, Divers, Coast Guard, or other nautical/beach related set(s)?  If so, now is the time to break them out.  Even if you never had a chance to pick up any of these classics, there’s always the 2009 white and lime green City Camper (7639) ready for some vacationing fun.  It even includes a surfboard for your beachside destination.  You could even trade one of your Zombie Minifigures from the Series 1 collection for an orange-finned Diver Dan.    

Make yourself an ice-cold smoothie or favorite tropical drink, and start building!  Here’s six ideas for some sensational summer scenes:

1. Day at the Beach: grab a few palms and some tan baseplates adding blue plates/bricks for water.  Blue baseplates are still available in many stores that sell LEGO, and you can pull the shorts from a business man while he tries on pants in the Grand Emporium.  Some Pirate sets like 6241 Loot Island can provide useful pieces.
2. Surf Shack: got a few brown log bricks left over from Fort Legoredo?  If so, try your hand at a surf shack.  While surfboards may be hard to come by, you could always try selling lemonade, bicycles, or icecream at your new summertime establishment.
3. Beach House: did you know that LEGO Creator set 4996 Beach House is still available?  If not, don’t let this set get away.  For $34.99 (USD), it has 522 useful pieces for building three different models, including the main model, a wonderful beach house.  Add some flowers, additional shrumbs, trees, and maybe a small area of ocean-front landscaping, and you’ve got the perfect summer get-away.
4. Bridge Over Troubled Water: got a land-locked Train Town or City that hasn’t seen rain in a long time?  Add some blue baseplates for water and try building a bridge for cars, trucks, or even a train to pass over your new water feature.  Make sure you leave some room for your favorite LEGO boat/ship and perhaps a few Coast Guard vehicles for a rescue scene.
5. Into the Blue: grab those Diver Minifigures and get busy building your own Diver, Nautica, or ocean exploration vessel.  7207 Fire Boat or even 7213 Off-Road Fire Truck & Fireboat can provide that perfect hull/raft for your nautical expedition.  Just be careful when exploring black lago0ns!
6. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: haven’t picked up an Atlantis set yet, nows the perfect time.  Most of the new theme sets are still available in stores and at LEGO Shop at Home.  Combine a few to create your favorite underwater action adventure.

So what’s stopping you from enjoying any of these sizzling summer scenes?  Get busy and start building!  You won’t even need sunscreen.

Do you consider yourself an adult fan of LEGO (AFOL)? If so, does the thought of a new LEGO set or theme give you a ‘warm fuzzy’? Do you find yourself combing LEGO community web sites in search of any grainy picture or information that might hint of a new set? If so, you are probably not an exception among fans of the LEGO hobby. The thought of a new City, Train, Star Wars, or (insert any of your favorite LEGO themes here), and especially a new exclusive truly sends LEGO fans in an excited frenzy that quickly spreads through blogs and front page news. AFOL then begin a relentless pursuit to acquire preliminary or ‘sneak-peak’ images of that new set that they can share with the LEGO community.

Do you suffer from the affliction?

If so, you may want to read All That Hype, an exclusive Eurobricks article.

One of my first LEGO doors was received in the 1975 Brick Yard set containing a red 2×3 door.  As a child, eager to open the unwrapped Christmas present, I was pleased as punch.  “Hey, look at the little door”, I said to myself as I could not wait to attach it to the green baseplate.  Unfortunately, although one could see through the clear plastic, the door had a major design flaw; it was molded shut.  A few years later, LEGO would introduce a new 3×4 door contained in many Universal Building sets that allowed small fingers to open an attachable screen.  Different color frames allowed mixing and matching to create interesting combinations.  Red frame, yellow screen; white frame, yellow screen; red frame, blue screen were just some of the many color combinations.  The only problem is that the doors were too small for the armless faceless minifigs introduced later in early LEGO town sets, and the same small hands would have to turn a minifig sideways flicking the fig through the doorway.  While some children on the block got quite good at “fig flicking”, how realistic was a door that’s smaller than the average minifig?  LEGO complicated the matter even more when they introduced the maxifig that was more than twice the height of the 3×4 door.  A new door was certainly needed.

A few years later and throughout the 80s and 90s, LEGO produced one of the best doors ever made, the 4×5 frameless door.  Many of you know this door well, and the upper four pain openings that allowed peepers to see inside Classic Town structures.  The door required no additional clear plastic or a frame, and it was molded in numerous colors including black, blue, green, light grey, red, brown, white, yellow, and even navy blue and pink. Pink?  (note to self: must find a MISB copy of Dolphin Point Lighthouse).  The 4×5 dimension for doors was so successful, it became a standard door size and also used for train doors, the 6-pain door, as well as 4×5 clear glass doors.  In addition, windows would be made in the same size.  4×5 seemed to be the perfect size for LEGO minifigs.

All things come to an end, and while LEGO city fans soon found themselves spending hours building their new modulars, their minds quickly forgot about the well-loved 4×5 door.  Replacing the “perfect door” was the new 4×6 door, one stud higher contained in a frame.  Cheaper, thinner plastic would replace the old 4×5, as well as the need to attach a round 1×1 plate for added door-opening ability.  Clear plastic, as well as a 4-pain option is now the standard door size. 

While I applaud LEGO for recovering from the demise of Classic Town, part of me can’t help to wonder, “Is bigger better”?  Has the LEGO door grown bigger to meet the needs of Toy Story Woody and a possible return of Pirates 4+, or do modular City fans have a growing need to see larger creations?    From the 1975 small 2×3 door that didn’t open to the new 4×6 door twice the size, what will future LEGO doors offer?

REFERENCES: Peeron, Eurobricks Town Reviews