Random set of the day: Gator Swamp
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 8899 Gator Swamp, released during 2010. It's one of 9 World Racers sets produced that year. It contains 354 pieces and 5 minifigs, and its retail price was US$39.99/£35.99.
It's owned by 1,464 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you should find it for sale at BrickLink, where new ones sell for around $38.50, or eBay.
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30 comments on this article
Only one gator, and only one plant to represent the swamp.
I see a Thornax fruit in something not Bionicle. Huwbot's giving us a hint that there's more to come tomorrow! Could be Vikings that used plenty of Bionicle parts, could be a Bionicle System playset, maybe an entirely separate Constraction theme altogether, but he's letting the Bionicle/Star Wars trend continue, it's just a lot more subtle today.
And if I'm wrong, I never said any of this, my account was hacked, and whoever said it is a liar and a scoundrel.
Nothing beats FuZone.
@MCLegoboy said:
"I see a Thornax fruit in something not Bionicle. Huwbot's giving us a hint that there's more to come tomorrow! Could be Vikings that used plenty of Bionicle parts, could be a Bionicle System playset, maybe an entirely separate Constraction theme altogether, but he's letting the Bionicle/Star Wars trend continue, it's just a lot more subtle today."
Could also be Alpha Team: Mission Deep Freeze, those tended to use a lot of Bionicle parts.
One of the last themes to embody that cool factor Lego lost somewhere in the mid-2010s. Loved that this theme effectively revitalized the Drome Racers concept and added weaponry with a true feeling of 'win at all costs.' It was sick.
One of the few sets with an "alligator" rather than "crocodile" though they use they same piece.
70419 does have a unique tan one with red eyes stated to be an albino gator in the set description though.
Why did I not know Lego had its own Wacky Races line?
@Maxbricks14 said:
"Only one gator, and only one plant to represent the swamp."
Nah, the plant’s not the swamp. The swamp is that 4x4 round plate of crystal blue water.
Rockets, mines, blades... Are we sure tihs is a racing theme? It seems overly aggressive.
Wow, I think this is the first World Racers set to be feature as a random set of the day.
Oh sure, there were only about 9 of them, and I think I own most of them.
Stickers notwithstanding (it was like the set designers were told to cover every flat surface, regardless of how small or impractical, with a sticker. I rebelled by not applying *any* of them), I loved these sets. I liked the idea, I thought they were cool.
@Lego_lord said:
"Rockets, mines, blades... Are we sure tihs is a racing theme? It seems overly aggressive."
Most non-licensed themes from that time period were weirdly warlike and aggressive. For a few years it seemed like the entire Lego universe was red in tooth and claw, a violent hellscape where life was nasty, brutish, and short. I'm glad that phase is mostly past. Even the mean streets of Lego City have been cleaned up a little. There hasn't been quite as much police presence there in the past couple of years as there used to be.
World Racers seemed to be obsessed with rocket ornaments, whereas really need working stud shooters to make more playable.
@Lego_lord said:
"Rockets, mines, blades... Are we sure tihs is a racing theme? It seems overly aggressive."
I genuinely thought it was a Ninjago set or something when I just saw the image, would not have pegged it as a Racing theme
World racers was one of 2010's more memorable outings if you were there. The theme is like a cross between a video game, realiy tv show and cartoon like wacky races.
A bit like mario cart too.
I only got the smallest set because at the end of the day it's a racing theme and that's not really my thing. But the over the topness of it was quite something.
Too bad about those stickers. It makes me hestitant to pick any up second-hand. What if a tiny one is missing?
Anyway, this one was the third largest of the theme. The boats are quite detailed because of it, but at the time it felt a bit too expensive for what you got. Even with the extra pit station adding a bit more than the smaller sets.
@Norikins said:
"One of the few sets with an "alligator" rather than "crocodile" though they use they same piece.
70419 does have a unique tan one with red eyes stated to be an albino gator in the set description though."
This set uses the old design for a crocodilian, though.
@Maxbricks14 said:
"Only one gator, and only one plant to represent the swamp."
Back in 2010 the swamp was the friends we made along the way. I loved this series. It was part of my peak "buying LEGO for my kid way before he was old enough to play with it" phase. He was two in 2010. ??
The vibe of late-2000s-to-early-2010s in-house action themes is really very nostalgic for me. I was never really into Racers, but this would probably be my favourite subtheme of it - all the weapons made perfect sense to a kid whose main exposure to racing aside from Cars was things like Mario Cart, the Speed Racer movie, and the podrace from The Phantom Menace.
I really need to get my hands on this set.
@Binnekamp said:
"Too bad about those stickers. It makes me hestitant to pick any up second-hand. What if a tiny one is missing?"
Honestly, there is very little reason to pick these sets up second hand because you can genuinely buy all of them sealed for below their original retail price. They have not retained their value in the slightest, probably being one of the least valuable retired themes to ever exist. I picked up this exact set for £20 sealed a few years ago, and could probably find it even cheaper if I wanted :P
Honestly World Racers to me looks like it came a decade too late. I didn't know about it at the time due to entering my dark age in 2010, but seeing it later? Between the over-exaggerated facial expressions, named minifigures, and 'intense for the sake of being intense' nature, it looks to me like it would have fit in much better with Lego's turn-of-the-millennium offerings than anything they were doing in 2010.
And that's not a criticism; late-90s and early-00s Lego was my childhood era, and the nostalgia goggles for them are large xD But by 2010 Lego's in-house themes seemed like they were more structured stories with either no named characters or tie-in animated content (and fairly standard faces...!), rather than the "here are guys with personalities and a world, go nuts figuring out how their story plays out" attitude of my childhood era themes.
Other than that impression, though, I really don't know anything about World Racers. Did it have lore? It looks like it should have had lore.
@SearchlightRG said:
"Why did I not know Lego had its own Wacky Races line?"
Probably because there where a whole lot of more exciting themes milling about in their time.
I was looking at the whole line and realized something. This is actually the first World Racers RSotD. But then, there were only nine sets, all released in one year. So it's understandable why none have been chosen yet, despite being eligible for five years.
I love World Racers! I had this set!
I wanted it especially for the small dock. Something about little bits like that were always appealing to me as a kid. It was our only instance of any sort of infrastructure for the World Racing organization itself. The only other representation the organization got was a small snowmobile and two other figures.
But this little platform with a crane and a few barrels sparked so many ideas in me about how this race could go. It has numbers which seem to indicate prices for fuel. So does that mean the clearly more sleek and modern green racers have the money to buy extra fuel for the race, and the red ones don't? Are they prices at all, or something else? Maybe the red racers are more likely to need fuel with their more crude, possibly more gas-guzzling vehicle. Since there are two barrels, maybe they are both meant to pick up a barrel. Maybe the red racers are the more humble ones, and know their limits, while the green racers pridefully assume that they can skip the refuel to save time, only for them to run out before the finish line.
Just the idea of having a race in a gator-infested swamp where the racers are hueling explosives at each other, and then the idea that they need to somehow stop and refuel, is just asking for cool moments for a kid to imagine. Is it a calm moment of truce between them in the middle of a marathon through the swamp? Is it a hectic half a second where they need to try and pull it off the crane at top speed?
Then there's the unnamed dock worker. What are his thoughts on all of this? He seems nervous of something. Does he mess up operating the crane and cause one of the barrels to fall into the swamp, leaving only one for the racers to collect? Does he have to fight the gators himself to protect the fuel barrels? Are the barrels even full of fuel at all?! Maybe they are secretly the thing the racers were supposed to collect to win, and the trophy is a fake.
So many ideas come from a small piece of infrastructure! World Racers is criminally underrated! I would love a return to this theme, even if just in tribute!
@HeavyLobster said:
"I love World Racers! I had this set!
I wanted it especially for the small dock. Something about little bits like that were always appealing to me as a kid. It was our only instance of any sort of infrastructure for the World Racing organization itself. The only other representation the organization got was a small snowmobile and two other figures.
But this little platform with a crane and a few barrels sparked so many ideas in me about how this race could go. It has numbers which seem to indicate prices for fuel. So does that mean the clearly more sleek and modern green racers have the money to buy extra fuel for the race, and the red ones don't? Are they prices at all, or something else? Maybe the red racers are more likely to need fuel with their more crude, possibly more gas-guzzling vehicle. Since there are two barrels, maybe they are both meant to pick up a barrel. Maybe the red racers are the more humble ones, and know their limits, while the green racers pridefully assume that they can skip the refuel to save time, only for them to run out before the finish line.
Just the idea of having a race in a gator-infested swamp where the racers are hueling explosives at each other, and then the idea that they need to somehow stop and refuel, is just asking for cool moments for a kid to imagine. Is it a calm moment of truce between them in the middle of a marathon through the swamp? Is it a hectic half a second where they need to try and pull it off the crane at top speed?
Then there's the unnamed dock worker. What are his thoughts on all of this? He seems nervous of something. Does he mess up operating the crane and cause one of the barrels to fall into the swamp, leaving only one for the racers to collect? Does he have to fight the gators himself to protect the fuel barrels? Are the barrels even full of fuel at all?! Maybe they are secretly the thing the racers were supposed to collect to win, and the trophy is a fake.
So many ideas come from a small piece of infrastructure! World Racers is criminally underrated! I would love a return to this theme, even if just in tribute!
"
Pretty sure the red team just steals their fuel. Just, you know, going by what I remember of their livery, purely off the top of my head.
@HeavyLobster said:
"I love World Racers! I had this set!
I wanted it especially for the small dock. Something about little bits like that were always appealing to me as a kid. It was our only instance of any sort of infrastructure for the World Racing organization itself. The only other representation the organization got was a small snowmobile and two other figures.
But this little platform with a crane and a few barrels sparked so many ideas in me about how this race could go. It has numbers which seem to indicate prices for fuel. So does that mean the clearly more sleek and modern green racers have the money to buy extra fuel for the race, and the red ones don't? Are they prices at all, or something else? Maybe the red racers are more likely to need fuel with their more crude, possibly more gas-guzzling vehicle. Since there are two barrels, maybe they are both meant to pick up a barrel. Maybe the red racers are the more humble ones, and know their limits, while the green racers pridefully assume that they can skip the refuel to save time, only for them to run out before the finish line.
Just the idea of having a race in a gator-infested swamp where the racers are hueling explosives at each other, and then the idea that they need to somehow stop and refuel, is just asking for cool moments for a kid to imagine. Is it a calm moment of truce between them in the middle of a marathon through the swamp? Is it a hectic half a second where they need to try and pull it off the crane at top speed?
Then there's the unnamed dock worker. What are his thoughts on all of this? He seems nervous of something. Does he mess up operating the crane and cause one of the barrels to fall into the swamp, leaving only one for the racers to collect? Does he have to fight the gators himself to protect the fuel barrels? Are the barrels even full of fuel at all?! Maybe they are secretly the thing the racers were supposed to collect to win, and the trophy is a fake.
So many ideas come from a small piece of infrastructure! World Racers is criminally underrated! I would love a return to this theme, even if just in tribute!
"
Slight correction, there is only one barrel. For some reason I thought there were two. Well, it was an easy enough thing to build I might have made a second one.
@ThatBionicleGuy said:
"Other than that impression, though, I really don't know anything about World Racers. Did it have lore? It looks like it should have had lore."
If there isn't any genuine lore, enough appearances here are sure to dispense some truly dark speculations, ala Fabuland or My Dad.
@TannerTheHunter said:
"One of the last themes to embody that cool factor Lego lost somewhere in the mid-2010s. Loved that this theme effectively revitalized the Drome Racers concept and added weaponry with a true feeling of 'win at all costs.' It was sick."
Yes, this was one of the last times Lego created original IP that wasn't accompanied by a TV show. I miss seeing themes like this.
@HeavyLobster said:"Maybe the red racers are the more humble ones, and know their limits, while the green racers pridefully assume that they can skip the refuel to save time, only for them to run out before the finish line."
So a possible tortoise and hare situation?
Tiny Turbos: "Check out how many stickers I have."
World Racers: "Hold my energy drink!"
Had this one. Always found it a bit silly the characters had double sided heads but helmets that didn't cover their second face