Random set of the day: Ambulance
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 606 Ambulance, released during 1978. It's one of 36 Town sets produced that year. It contains 30 pieces and 1 minifig.
It's owned by 1,061 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 $226.50, or eBay.
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36 comments on this article
How you're gonna fit the driver inside is a mystery, but the patient as well!
What is this, an ambulance for ants?
Is it just me, or do her eyes in the picture look very big?
Whew $7.50/piece in the aftermarket has to be some kind of record for a non-minifigure….
Still don't understand why these old minifigure vehicles couldn't actually fit a freaking minifigure!!!
@Maxbricks14 said:
"Is it just me, or do her eyes in the picture look very big?"
Are we sure this isn't some cursed Citizen Brick custom?
I think I've figured out how the scale of these old sets work. It's like in old JRPGs where a city becomes exponentially.larger once you walk into it.
An interesting Set of the Day! It's from the dawn of the Minifig so the set wasn't designed to accommodate one yet, it was an extra plaything. The set is an obvious part of the transition to minifig playsets, it's the Medical counterpart to 600-2 and has many of its same quirks.
Being from the first batch of Minifigs, the Nurse's odd face is likely from this being a mockup Minifig head for the photo, possibly hand-drawn! The hands are also posed upside-down compared to modern figs.
@AverageChimaEnjoyer said:
"Still don't understand why these old minifigure vehicles couldn't actually fit a freaking minifigure!!!"
They can fit. You just have to hammer them in. That's why it's an ambulance, since they're going to need medical treatment afterwards.
Beyond the smallness of the ambulance, is it just me or is the minifigure's face slightly crooked? Looks weird.
I wonder why they had to photograph the box art before the heads had been printed. That's quite a hurry to have been in.
@AverageChimaEnjoyer said:
"Still don't understand why these old minifigure vehicles couldn't actually fit a freaking minifigure!!!"
Maybe the alternate models included an ambulance go-kart.
@AverageChimaEnjoyer said:
"Still don't understand why these old minifigure vehicles couldn't actually fit a freaking minifigure!!!"
Imagination.
Vehicles of that style and scale predate minifigs. Cars that actually fit them were something of a break through.
It's figurative play
Don't need to be all in the same scale
Don't need to have a hundred of 1x1 plates or tiles
It's a set from when LEGO was for kids (not for AFOLs pretending to be still kids)
If I owned this as a kid this would work as a clown car: all the minifigs I would own would fit in it at the same time.
@cabbie said:
"Vehicles of that style and scale predate minifigs. Cars that actually fit them were something of a break through.
"
LEGO started as a complement of matchbox style diecast cars. Some time later they thought that cars would be also made of bricks. Next they added the static minifigs. And in the 70s with the rise of the mobile action figures (basic plastic little figures, with no clothes born after oil crisis like Playmobil, mobile action commands,...) they created their articulated minifigs
When the acceptance of articulated figures increase into kids all the brands pivot their toys on the figures. And lego redesign gradually the elements to make them to be able to interact with the figures. Due to it LEGO introduce first new cars in which you can sit a minifig and then adjust the high of the walls and doors of the building to make more suitable for minifigs
I would absolutely have sat her on top of the car and added something to serve as reins so she could look like she was driving it like a carriage
I had this set as a kid and it NEVER EVEN OCCURRED to me, it was strange that the minifig couldn’t fit inside!!!
I also had the equivalent
Police car: 600-2
Fire Chief car: 602
And my favourite
Taxi: 608-2
Aaargh, her hands are upside down!!
2nd hand price $2 at best
Breaking the Geneva convention again, are we?
I managed to replicate the cop car in this proportions. I had some real old parts from a second hand lot. I love, it makes me feel like a part of history.
@AllenSmith said:
"I wonder why they had to photograph the box art before the heads had been printed. That's quite a hurry to have been in.
@AverageChimaEnjoyer said:
"Still don't understand why these old minifigure vehicles couldn't actually fit a freaking minifigure!!!"
Maybe the alternate models included an ambulance go-kart."
This set is 46 years old. I can't be sure because I'm too young to have worked at that time and especially not at Lego, but production had changed a lot since.
In 1978, it's the dawn of personal computers. Most of things are done by hand because computer are for calculation so think about accountants. Arpanet (internet "ancestor") is also beginning so imagine communication with notes and mails (companies had an internal post service).
Everything was slower. The design of the product required many iterations to get the model right and then the production right, you couldn't get a preview on a computer. The box art and instructions were done on their side with also iterations for having a correct result.
You can then easily imagine that the picture was taken with a very first production test batch, or parts that were stored at the company.
The hurry was probably there: to launch different sets in a minimum period of time, with communications and processes slower than now.
The minifigure is essentially the same 46 years later. Amazing.
@AverageChimaEnjoyer said:
"
Still don't understand why these old minifigure vehicles couldn't actually fit a freaking minifigure!!!"
This isn't a minifigure vehicle. It is a vehicle and a minifigure.
The vehicles were still being done as they had been before minifigures were a thing, in the old LEGOLAND style. Kids back then were used to playing with vehicles without needing a person inside, just as kids today still play with Matchbox style cars without drivers. LEGO was far simpler then, more aimed at play than the building style. You could take a handful of parts, build a little car in a couple of minutes and play. The minifigures were not really necessary for the driving cars around style play, unless you wanted someone to get run over.
That's not an ambulance. That's an old car from the 1910s with a jug of water strapped to the roof.
@el_garfio said:
"LEGO started as a complement of matchbox style diecast cars."
No, Lego started as wooden toys. I'm pretty sure that 700-12 was released before the cars came along, too.
As disproportionate as it is, i can't help but be a sucker for that early Minifig charm XD. The big eyes, the non-ambulance size, the lack of space for even the upper torso...man,the stories you could make up to play with this....perfect imagination fodder for sure!
@Minifig_Jez said:
"
I had this set as a kid and it NEVER EVEN OCCURRED to me, it was strange that the minifig couldn’t fit inside!!!
I also had the equivalent
Police car: 600-2
Fire Chief car: 602
And my favourite
Taxi: 608-2 "
The taxi was awesome, I loved the blue and black combination - again it didn't really bother me that nothing was to scale and you just had to imagine that your Lego town looked like mine actually does today. I am glad we didn't have the complex sets, multiple parts and colours when I was 6 in 1978 as my 50p a week pocket money and birthdays / Christmas just would not have coped...
Look at the perspective on that image! This is how you show an ambulance off in the distance with the EMT running to help.
In the old days, before Lego started making 8-studs-wide vehicles, they made 8-studs-long vehicles
as someone who is old enough to have brought this in 1978 or 1979, 1978 was an amazing year as well as minifigures there were lots of new parts introduced such as tyres with treads, wheels on 2 x 2 plates rather than 2x2 bricks, mud guards road plates etc. The year before 1977 was the introduction of technical Lego as it was then called.
My first year of Lego as a 4 year-old.. I remember having no qualms about just sitting the minifigure on top of the cars, there was also taxi, Shell car, police car, fire chief’s car in the same design - although I did prefer sets like 641 where you could sit the minifig in properly!
You younglings will never understand how great these first minifigure sets were to us. Yes, the figure didn’t fit in, but so what. They were opening a whole new world of storytelling to us. We were instantly in love with them. I don’t think that there was ever a more perfect, immediately endearing and at the same time more practical toy design than the Lego minifig. As illustrated by the fact that they’re practically unchanged for almost fifty years now.
Ah, Lego "Hot Wheels" before "Racers"...still; this was a FUN era, the "feeling out stage" of the minifig and its interaction with builds. I mean; it wasn't the same as the manakinfigures or spaghetti-arms, it was whole new thing altogether...waits for the "Airplane"...and 'Space' and 'Castle'...while 'Town' was seen by many as "bronze" (or 'third in a three-man race'), the 'possibilities' were there. 'Town' crawled so 'City' run, and then later (like now) fly...:)
Also, it should be noted: I don't have this one; but did have the Fire Chief's and Police Chief's, and those were good (although they lived in the shadow of the Coast Guard Station and Space Cruiser...:))
@markisnot said:
"Look at the perspective on that image! This is how you show an ambulance off in the distance with the EMT running to help. "
Uphill, no less. She’s gonna need an ambulance by the time she reaches the victim.