@Miyakan said:
"And people complained about the cockpit closure on 75577"

75102 was bad too. The picture makes it look perfectly fine but if you have the set there’s something in the way that makes the windscreen lot lay flat. It gets annoying after a while.

This was a great little scout/fighter; neat design, very swooshable and didn’t fall into the “too many guns” trap that a couple other sets from this line fell into. Even if the pilot is a little exposed and doesn’t seem to have any way of actually piloting the ship!

Also, the humans were technically on Mars to mine energy crystals, even if they did end up having to weaponise to defend themselves, so I’m counting this as day five or Huwbot’s construction bend

This is one of my favorite sets and one of my favorite themes. I sadly didn't have many Space sets when I was a kid so I cherished what little I had. Unfortunately the sticker quality was pretty bad and they've disintegrated after all this time.

Huwbot’s been serving us some bangers this week! This is one of only two Mars Mission sets I have/had. It’s such a simple set but it serves as a great introduction to the theme. You get a cool little ship with two great figures and some really cool parts. I remember being enamored with the trans dark blue 1x1 brick and the trans orange canopy piece as a kid. I really should get some more Mars Mission sets, I’ve always loved the look of them but I was too busy getting Agents and Power Miners back then haha.

I wonder how well you could fly anything in such a reclined position. It's actually quite a common thing in LEGO to seat the figures like this, and I'd love to something like this in real life.

My brother had two of these and he let me mod one so that the wings were more of an arrowhead shape. I was obsessed with Obi-Wan's Jedi starfighter at the time so I wanted to make something that looked like it.

@Endermen39 said:
" @Miyakan said:
"And people complained about the cockpit closure on 75577"

75102 was bad too. The picture makes it look perfectly fine but if you have the set there’s something in the way that makes the windscreen lot lay flat. It gets annoying after a while."

Oh that just triggered painful memories. I noticed it on 75102 too. Still can only assume it wasn't a well toleranced piece and clashed with either studs at the front, or the slope pieces at the back.

And yes I've done engineering, bad tolerancing annoys me!!

An exemplary set from Mars Mission! I love original themes, but to me Mars Mission alwas seemed a bit... hollow. Flat. Non-substantive. Stretched out. This set has that, yet still looks stylish in doing it like most of the theme. And since it's an impulse sized set it flips around to giving a cool ship for cheap.
I'll always prefer Life on Mars for the aliens and Space Police III for the ships, but MM does have some amazing ship designs.

I miss the days when there was more choice in this kind of unique in-house theme. Most things being in Ninjago, City or Friends styling for over a full decade just isn't the same.

Huh, hadn’t realised we’d had quite this much Mars Mission pop up in Random Set; this is the 12th entry out of only 19 sets, two of which don’t seem to count as actual sets so I’m not sure they’d even be in RSotD’s algorithm

I like the design, it looks good. But I don't like the lack of control mechanism. It just doesn't work for me.

The dearth just before the start of the Golden Age.

@Arnoldos said:
" @bealegopro said:
"This is an amazing $5 set. LEGO would sell this today for $10 or maybe $11, but 16 years ago, someone could buy an official LEGO off-brand Star Wars ship for $5.

Imagine an army of 20 or so of these!"

My brother in christ Star Wars doesn't have a monopoly on spaceships and Lego has been making them way before Lego Star Wars was a thing.

In fact I absolutely loathe Lego Star Wars for killing off Lego's original Space themes."

I meant that unlike most LEGO spaceships, this one looks awfully like a Stars Wars type.

@collectormom said:
"I got this for “free” by sending in 5 UPC’s from Cheerios. At age 37 it was also my very first LEGO set. Growing up in the 70’s my mother refused to buy me LEGO saying I would never play with it. Yes, she is a terrible mother. "
You have my sympathies for growing up in such a repressive home.

60354: Mars Spacecraft Exploration Missions would be the current available variant of it, not just because of Mars, also because it's officially shown with some type of weapon configurations.

Clearly, when going interstellar, either weapons became integrated into the craft, or the evil type of aliens were no threat anymore by the time 60430: Interstellar Spaceship was designed in the LEGO world.

Man, Mars Mission was such an underrated theme. The transforming vehicles paved the way for more legendary themes like Power Miners, Atlantis, and Legends of Chima!

@collectormom said:
"I got this for “free” by sending in 5 UPC’s from Cheerios. At age 37 it was also my very first LEGO set. Growing up in the 70’s my mother refused to buy me LEGO saying I would never play with it. Yes, she is a terrible mother. "

This apparently did not happen in Europe, but around the time the minifig debuted, the US market shifted from being coed to being almost exclusively boys. From what I can tell, this mainly impacted Gen X and Millennials, but Gen Z is shifting back to being coed. One person told me she thinks this was because girls’ toys are mostly purchased for them by mothers and grandmothers, and Friends fit the dollhouse aesthetic many of them were searching for. In Europe, Town/City has typically been one of the top themes, but in the US the 80’s was largely about Space, Castle, Pirates, and other adventurey genre themes that wouldn’t appeal to women of a more traditional mindset, so two generations of girls grew up being deprived of this experience.

@lost_scotsman said:
" @Endermen39 said:
" @Miyakan said:
"And people complained about the cockpit closure on 75577"

75102 was bad too. The picture makes it look perfectly fine but if you have the set there’s something in the way that makes the windscreen lot lay flat. It gets annoying after a while."

Oh that just triggered painful memories. I noticed it on 75102 too. Still can only assume it wasn't a well toleranced piece and clashed with either studs at the front, or the slope pieces at the back.

And yes I've done engineering, bad tolerancing annoys me!!"

So you’re thinking something along the lines of the original visor mold for the motorcycle helmet, where it would never quite sit flush against the chinstrap? I remember that always bugged me as a kid. At some point this was corrected, as I have a bag of modern Blacktron minifigs whose visors actually produce an audible click when you shut them quickly.

@Brickalili:
If you’re referring to 7728 and 7729, the system does seem to treat them as actual sets, just ones that were never released. The piece count is high enough, and they have a release date attached. Unless there’s a special flag in the system that disqualifies unreleased sets, they seem eligible for RSotD.

@PurpleDave: I just went down the "Unreleased" tag, and three of the sets with that tag (5373, 8029, and 4949) have been RSotD.

@AverageChimaEnjoyer said:
"Man, Mars Mission was such an underrated theme. The transforming vehicles paved the way for more legendary themes like Power Miners, Atlantis, and Legends of Chima!"

It was also one of worst Space themes. Only good things were the parts and colorsheme.

@lordofdragonss: Mars Mission definitely had the worst aliens of all the Space themes that had them. Granted, the commander (https://brickset.com/minifigs/mm010/mars-mission-alien-commander) was pretty cool, but the rank-and file (https://brickset.com/minifigs/mm001/mars-mission-alien-with-marbled-glow-in-dark-torso) only had one point of articulation!

The Mars Mission set so good, I got it twice (helped that it was quite affordable). I really wanted a whole squadron of them, but that was fiscally irresponsible, so I never got beyond two.

These aren't PERFECT: having stickers for engines always seemed a bit too cheap for me, but on whole I thought they were excellent for the pricepoint.

@Miyakan said:
"And people complained about the cockpit closure on 75577"

They just needed to somehow get a final use out of the Alpha Team windshield thing.

@Randomness said:
" @Miyakan said:
"And people complained about the cockpit closure on 75577"

They just needed to somehow get a final use out of the Alpha Team windshield thing."

This wasn't even its final use.

@Norikins said:
" @Randomness said:
" @Miyakan said:
"And people complained about the cockpit closure on 75577"

They just needed to somehow get a final use out of the Alpha Team windshield thing."

This wasn't even its final use."

Oh, sorry.
8635 it seems.