Random set of the day: Bungee Chopper
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 8202 Bungee Chopper, released during 1998. It's one of 27 Technic sets produced that year. It contains 72 pieces, and its retail price was US$7.
It's owned by 1,771 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 $11.20, or eBay.
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28 comments on this article
Ooh, chopping bungees is generally not recommended, especially if they're under load.
Wow, this dredged up forgotten memories!
Does that mean it chops bungees sending people plummeting to their deaths?
Why so many technic sets, huwbot? Where's clickits and beliville?
Yeah, Cyber Slam (aka Competition)!
One of the first sets ever to use Teal/Bright Bluish Green. And also one of the first to use Purple/Bright Violet - which also was a bit unusual as it's the only Cyber Slam model (not set!) to use both of these colors.
Whilst this is one if the few Cyber Slym sets to not have a Technic figure, it still uses the stickered tiles that mark their starting number (?).
Note that the box had cutouts to turn it into two ramps, so the chopper could jump over the 'monster pit' that was printed on the back of one of the 2 instruction books.
I'm still on the hunt for it's rare purple counterpart with the number 1. Unfortunately the alternate color is not a perfect color switch, as it did not turn the purple belt drum teal...
The alternate model wants you to use an additional sticker on the black liftarm, which looks a bit odd when reverted back.
You know, this doesn't look like a device that enables bungee jumping *or* a helicopter of any description.
Now these are toys. I can imagine having had great fun with this back in the day. Might get some for my gremlins.
Interesting that both random minifig of the day and the random set of the day are from tricycle sets.
Interesting concept but I'm not sure about the lifespan of the rubber. After a decade or so they tend to get rigid and crumble.
@Maxbricks14: No, no, no Max...clearly: it's a helicopter powered BY bungee cords...which would make less safer than a standard helicopter...which isn't (and I see the irony of the term) "too far of a stretch" :D
Interesting to see that the B-model of this trike actually is a 4-wheeled something....
Even when I share the worries of Lego_lord about the lifespan of that band, I do like that you actually build that mechanism instead of just using a pullback motor. As much as I appreciate the current pullback sets as toys, there's not much actual "Technic" involved in those.
Finally, a vehicle with a proper name!
Bungee cord powered propulsion is the future, man.
I had one of these cords at one point. They're not rubber but some sort of woven artificial material like nylon or something. I think it would easily outlive the rubber bands of those days, which shriveled up and disintegrated after about a year.
@Lego_lord said:
"Interesting concept but I'm not sure about the lifespan of the rubber. After a decade or so they tend to get rigid and crumble."
I recently ran across my old Sea Claw 7, and the rubber band seemed fine after all those years without even being disassembled. On the other hand, I once wrote an article about the rubber bands used the first year of Bionicle sets. One stretch (just one!) is all it took to see a noticeable change in how glossy the surface was, and by the end of the week it would already be crumbling to dust. That era of black rubber bands were straight garbage, and it’s no surprise they switched to Technic bands the following year.
The first Technic set I ever built.
I have the similar 8205. Unsurprisingly, the bungee band is shot after 25 years. I cut a rubber band and use it as a replacement when I want to use the set.
BTW, how does one create set numbers with hyperlinks in the comments?
I actually still have this one and the purple one still sealed in the boxes.
@johnnytifosi said:
"BTW, how does one create set numbers with hyperlinks in the comments?"
Just put a hashtag in front of the number.
Imagine what the bungee will do to a seated driver. Hence, "chopper".
One of the few sets I got during my dark ages
I also have the similar 8205
Dang it, I saw Chopper and thought this would be an article about a Star Wars droid infamous for casually committing war crimes...
I had most, if not all, of this set from a technic lot we got from someone's garage sale aaaaaages ago, but I just never realised it at the time. I wasn't especially into Technic, at least outside of Slizer and Bionicle and Star Wars, so I didn't put any real effort into figuring out what sets I had in the lot: I just threw them in with the rest of my collection of spare parts for if I ever had a use for them.
So how do I know I had this set? Mostly because those bungee cords were a pretty distinctive piece, they were still tied onto the reel, and I had no idea what they were for until I discovered these sets in the database many years after I'd moved the pieces on. I also recognise I had the teal liftarms (and I *think* the tile with the sticker?) in that lot too, in hindsight.
Should have done more research at the time, I guess... although to be fair, I was still a kid then and didn't even know that Brickset existed yet!
I know I had one of the bungee powered pull-back vehicles (I think 2129), but the database doesn't show me owning any of them. Either I forgot which one I had and so never listed it, or a database glitch removed my "owned" notification.
@PurpleDave: I know what you mean about the old rubber bands. I was so glad, when I bought 8858 on eBay, to see that the seller had replaced those with the more modern bands. I should look into what sizes should be necessary to get to do the same for my first-year Bionicle sets, especially 8538. That one's in storage right now, but it was still built when my parents packed all my stuff up after my stroke. I have a feeling that if I got it out of storage now and tried to trigger its mechanism (which was so much fun to play with!), most of the bands would not come out of that alive.
@WizardOfOss said:
"Interesting to see that the B-model of this trike actually is a 4-wheeled something....
Even when I share the worries of Lego_lord about the lifespan of that band, I do like that you actually build that mechanism instead of just using a pullback motor. As much as I appreciate the current pullback sets as toys, there's not much actual "Technic" involved in those."
If you disassemble it and store it at least somewhat secure, you would not have to worry about that. I have a lot of those from various sets, the oldest being from 8205 and all are still as good as new.
Interestingly two of those rubber bands appeared in 8457, where you are meant to knot one of those to an axle for the trailer release mechanism. And also, this band is slightly thinner and more soft than the similar band used for the mask in 6999 if anyone is curious about that.
There is even a purple recolor, 2584 .
@TheOtherMike:
Technic bands and black rubber bands don’t really have any equivalence. The black ones stretch farther without exceeding their elastic limit. The Technic ones will often be too loose to stay on the way the instructions show, and reach their elastic limit before you’ve completed the range of motion. They _really_ weren’t designed to act as rubber bands, but more as drive belts like in a car engine. The fact that they used them for the Bohrok and Bahrag from 2002 was probably only done because of the fast failure rate of the 2001 rubber bands, and the fact that they got them to work perfectly is very impressive.
@Atuin:
It depends on when the rubber band was made. Anything from 2001 visibly changed appearances after one stretch. I wouldn’t be surprised if even unstretched examples have turned crumbly by now, being over 20 years old at this point.
Mid technic set