That’s a lot of sand dunes, the poor guy been dumped in the Sahara or something?

@megazz said:
"Would Lego ever consider putting together a big tub of pieces that would let you recreate these fun little sets again, as part of all the other bits that they could also pack in there to make it more viable.

A big nostalgia bucket… as if you pulled out your 30 year old tub at home when you were a kid… "

I doubt it would sell
I still have mine and it's a lovely set but if you try to sell it you will only get €1-2.
I sometimes buy 2nd hand lego and the parts/sets I don't need I try to sell and the small 80/90 city sets take forever to sell.

@Brickalili said:
"That’s a lot of sand dunes, the poor guy been dumped in the Sahara or something?"

Nah, he's just going to make a beach resort here. All by himself.

It's too wholesome! I love that the whole top and back hinges for easy fig removal, too. It's darn near perfect for a little 90s set.

I loved this set. I'd saved up for weeks without buying any sweets and wanted something "big" like a toy. Spent what seemed like hours deciding between a handful of Lego sets. Went with this because of how great the bucket looked and my idea of taking off the wheels and hinging the bucket back as a sort of rocket exhaust for a spaceship. I thought this made it more versatile than the actual space sets I could afford.

@Atuin:
Bricklink has the groovy grille tile appearing as early as 1990. I find both dates to be suspect on the basis that a lot of people don’t understand alternate part entries, or aren’t aware that one exists, when adding set inventories.

I won this set at a Christmas raffle, at the time I thought it was an amazing coincidence that I, a lover of Lego, would win the Lego set. Looking back, I am sure it got rigged by someone who was looking out for me.

Aww, it's so cute. I love how the entire back hinges to open the canopy too.

One of my oldest memories is unboxing and building this one, lovely stuff.

I really like the classic dump piece.

Cute. I'm gonna make this with my spare parts

@PurpleDave said:
" @Atuin:
Bricklink has the groovy grille tile appearing as early as 1990. I find both dates to be suspect on the basis that a lot of people don’t understand alternate part entries, or aren’t aware that one exists, when adding set inventories."

Ughh... Now I'm really puzzled.

Being 100% sure from my memory that I first saw the 'groovy' ones in early 1993 or maybe late 1992, I had to dig through my stuff for evidence. I have a copy of 4537 that I can assure you was never mixed with other parts and always neatly stored in it's original box, including paperwork and extra parts. This specific set to my surprise happened to have grooveless grille tiles in black (although the single green one is in fact 'groovy').

Now to the difficult part: 4537 was produced from 1993-1996, according to the 2008 Collector's Book. I am not very trustful of the information in said book, so let's take a look at the specific catalogues: Both the Dutch and UK catalogue of 1995 still list it, but it disappears from all 1996 catalogues I could find. So I assume it was still produced in 1995?

I opened my copy in March 1998, so it's hard to tell when it was actually produced/packaged. It does however contain a Service packs brochure from 1993 (these always had order forms and price listings with the legal fine print telling 'valid till 31st December of 199X'). Unfortunately this is no real evidence either.

So I kept digging through instructions of the questionable era: Usually the part files the used for the instructions were not updated the same year a (visible) mould change occurs, but it could give us a new hint, as they would not update the instruction depiction without a mould change.
6852 (from 1993) seems to still use the old version, also visible in the set photo. However both 6834 and 6983 (from the same year) use the 'groovy' ones in both the 'drawn' version as in the photo. Ice Planet was released in most countries in February 1993. So I'd say the first appearance of 'groovy' grille tiles was in early 1993, with some sets new for 1993 still using up stock of old versions and all older sets still produced in that year might sometimes contain the newer version.

Convinced? :P

Also note, that due to the design change of 1992, there exist two versions of almost all 1991 minifig sets, the original yellow one with only the 'LEGO' logo in the top right corner and a re-release version with the color-coding and the 'LEGO SYSTEM' branding. Oddly though, whilst later runs of 1990 sets seem to use the same box, their copyright marking lists newer ones as '(c) 1990, 1992 LEGO Group.' This might give a hint for inventory updates (not only smaller ones, as there were quite a few more intense model updates to some sets in that era, like 6851).

Btw, totally agree on your statement regarding BL inventories.

@Atuin:
To give you an idea how messy some of the early set inventories could get, there are at least four mold designs for minifig heads, including solid stud, Y-block stud, solid recessed stud, and I-block stud. When Bricklink was founded, Dan ruled that all minifig inventories had to be listed with the Y-block stud that was in production at the time, even if the sets predates that mold by a decade. So there were Sellers who would list the stock minifig, but had to add a note to the description specifying that the stud was solid. And there were Buyers who had to ask for the same when the seller didn’t state this to be the case. I understand it was a cluster of epic proportions when they finally decided to fix all those old inventories, since they needed people who could _confirm_ which head shipped in each affected set. This involved people having to open sealed vintage sets, or verify against one that they had already opened and left built ever since.