Review: 60453 Lifeguard Truck

This is a great tie in with other coast and sea related sets, even the bricklink harbour master.

Several excellent City vehicles this year. The Lifeguard Truck is great but my favourite is the 60447 Land Rover lookalike.

@Maxbricks14 said:
"This is surprisingly great!

And I love the sunroof piece, reminiscent of the one from the Town theme."

Super 80's element!

Holy crap, proper-sized opening doors on a (mostly) proper-sized (mostly) 6-wide vehicle? Now, if only they could learn how to make fenders that don't look like someone was slapped together on the way out to the parking lot on a Friday afternoon before a two-week vacation.

@chefkaspa said:
""..although I find the 1x6 arch bricks forming the wheel arches a little awkward, considering the abrupt change from curved to straight lines."
Perhaps somebody thought to stick what had worked more than 50 years ago: https://brickset.com/sets/382-1"

Making do with something doesn't mean it worked.

I'll be honest, that sunroof is a big part of why I want this set, although the rest of it looks great, too. Sure, 60447 uses that piece in a clever way, but that use doesn't bring back fond memories of Eighties and Nineties sets.

As someone who’s been dealing with a lot of Flame Yellowish Orange pieces (my School Bus project) I know firsthand how difficult that color is for photography and even for renders.

For example, in Jang’s Lego review the color is a slightly too orange, and in these photos it may be a tad too yellow but very close to what the color looks like in person. Even Lego’s official renders are too orange in my opinion. Obviously there’s a lot of variables including the screen I’m using to view the images. It’s a great color and a very interesting one.

@Sparky_Ham said:
"Finally, a home for my series 2 and series 12 lifeguards!"

I think this set should have had a rerelease both of them. 8684-8 , 71007-7
A blonde female lifeguard in a red swimdress is essential.

@CapnRex101 lifeguards aren’t affiliated with the Coast Guard.

@Huw said:
" @B_Space_Man said:
"As someone who’s been dealing with a lot of Flame Yellowish Orange pieces (my School Bus project) I know firsthand how difficult that color is for photography and even for renders. "

I believe many camera sensors have difficulty with orange for some reason. "

My first digital camera made red look like the new reddish-orange, made green look _exactly_ like teal, and gave blue a slightly green tint. I don't really notice any color issues with my current (third) camera, but I haven't really done a lot of LEGO photography since I bought it, and don't think I've ever tried to photograph this color specifically.

The taller doors, sunroof function, and orange color alone make me want this set. Adding in the side-by-side seating, red surfboards (x2), and a shark makes it an inevitable buy at a decent discount.

*Also, the Baywatch theme is blasting on repeat in my brain while typing this.

That vehicle is giving me proper Baywatch vibes - which in my book is a positive.
Time for a return of The Hoff in minifig form :-)

@CapnRex101 said:
" @SearchlightRG said:
" @CapnRex101 lifeguards aren’t affiliated with the Coast Guard."

Not in the sense of the Coast Guard as a military-adjacent organisation, but as groups responsible for safety in the water and where LEGO sets are concerned, yes they are. The minifigure sitting on the watchtower in 60163 Coast Guard Starter Set is a member of the Coast Guard, as are those aboard the patrol boat in 60167 Coast Guard Headquarters."

Can you give other examples to support your position? In other words, if we ignore 60163, are there any other sets that cross the division between the Coast Guard's role (dealing with boats, including passengers or crew who fall off them) and lifeguards' role (dealing with swimmers, surfers, and other people who walk or jump into the water from land)?

@gearwheel said:
" @CapnRex101 said:
" @SearchlightRG said:
" @CapnRex101 lifeguards aren’t affiliated with the Coast Guard."

Not in the sense of the Coast Guard as a military-adjacent organisation, but as groups responsible for safety in the water and where LEGO sets are concerned, yes they are. The minifigure sitting on the watchtower in 60163 Coast Guard Starter Set is a member of the Coast Guard, as are those aboard the patrol boat in 60167 Coast Guard Headquarters."

Can you give other examples to support your position? In other words, if we ignore 60163, are there any other sets that cross the division between the Coast Guard's role (dealing with boats, including passengers or crew who fall off them) and lifeguards' role (dealing with swimmers, surfers, and other people who walk or jump into the water from land)?"

What gearwheel said. The starter set is by its nature simplistic and not particularly true to life. And the watcher from said set is clearly meant as a watcher, and not the person doing the actual rescuing, which is pretty much the definition of a lifeguard.

Ooooh, this truck is giving me such vibes from the yellow truck from 6490 Amazon Crossing, one of my oldest sets. I think I have to get this.

That sunroof piece is amazing, new for 2025, but used to be a classic in Town in the 4-wide version.

@BrickAnomie said:
"I would have liked to see a photo of the chassis during the build process."

The instructions are available online :-)

@CapnRex101 said:
"I think there is a difference between the responsibilities of European Coast Guard services and the US Coast Guard, hence the debate. HM Coastguard in the UK could be called out to any incident at sea or along the coast, including rescuing swimmers or surfers, whereas I get the impression the US Coast Guard is focused mainly on shipping and issues a bit further out to sea."

Well, yes and no. As far as I can tell, Coast Guards are never involved in watching swimmers on beaches, as that's what lifeguards do. If a rescue is beyond the lifeguard's abilities and/or equipment, then they'd call in someone else for Search and Rescue-type operations.

In the US, that'd typically be local emergency services affiliated with the local police, fire (in quite a few places in the US, fire departments are the primary local non-law-enforcement emergency services), or paramedic services. The Coast Guard generally only gets involved (though they do get involved) if the rescue operation is then beyond what local emergency services can handle, whether due to distance from shore or size of the emergency (e.g. a lot of affected people).

In the UK, it looks like HM Coastguard has the volunteer rescue officer corps (which seem to be akin to volunteer firefighters), which provides some of the services that in the US are provided by local emergency services. If they can't handle the situation, then, just like in the US, it gets escalated to the professional Coastguard proper.

So yes, HM Coastguard is more involved in day-to-day shoreline SAR than the US Coast Guard, but no, HM Coastguard doesn't hang out at beaches and tell you to wait after eating before you go for a swim, or tell you that the tide just washed in some nasty stuff and the beach is closed.

So 60163 is lifeguards, or maybe park rangers, but not Coast Guard, same with 5626 and 7736. 7737 and 60011 are iffy (looks lifeguard-y to me, but I could see it as the search part of local SAR instead), and 60012 and 60165 are definitely in the "Coast Guard in some countries, local SAR in others" range. Special shoutout to 5621, which wouldn't be used by Coast Guard, SAR, or even lifeguards for littoral areas, as everyone is going to use motor boats like in 60012 due to being faster (important for SAR), bigger (can't really rescue someone with a 1-person kayak), and don't tire out the rescue worker.

This really is a cool set, when this years City images first dropped, this set really captured my interest! I was suspired by the price too, wondering if the shark pushes this over 20 bucks.

@CapnRex101:
Just like the police might run into a burning building to save someone before the fire department shows up, the USCG will absolutely rescue swimmers if they happen to be nearby, or the area is not monitored by a lifeguard. The USCG does maintain a significant presence on the Great Lakes, including Lake Michigan (which is not on an international border). They still conduct a lot of Search & Rescue operations on the Great Lakes. In some cases, this could be rescuing the crew of a sinking vessel via helicopter, but they may have to go chase down small boats, especially unpowered ones like kayaks, when they get lost, or get caught in a storm. If a swimmer gets pulled out by the undertow, they're usually going to end up beyond the effective range of a lifeguard swimming out from shore, so that's another case where they may be called upon. But SAR is kind of an all-in situation, where you may have local, county, and state police coordinating with the fire department, Coast Guard, and volunteer SAR organizations.

@gearwheel:
I was just looking up Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore's notorious warning sign, and found out it's actually a local fire department that typically has to conduct rescue operations when someone can't get back up the steep dune leading down to the shoreline. The signs don't actually say who gets sent to save you from your own stupidity, but I'd assumed it was the USCG, since they have a station in Traverse City. Apparently it's cheaper to get hauled back up the dune with a rope by the local firefighters. "Cheaper" being a relative term, since the price was up to $2280 six years ago.

I like the look of the city vehicles in 2025. But bigger means more pieces thus higher price.

I like the set. Just wished they would have left out the worried expression, or changed the shark for a dolphin or something.

This way, the preconception of sharks being something to be afraid of again is brought up.

The only con is that this doesn't come with a David Hasselhoff minifigure.

@Wrecknbuild said:
"I like the set. Just wished they would have left out the worried expression, or changed the shark for a dolphin or something.

This way, the preconception of sharks being something to be afraid of again is brought up."

In fairness, if a shark is checking out a surfer, it’s unlikely to end well for the surfer unless they make all the right choices, are very observant, and there’s only one shark. Sharks check things out with the pointy bits. Just because they realize you’re not food doesn’t mean you aren’t in trouble.

What is recently coming to light is that, just because a particular area has been safe for your entire life doesn’t mean it has always been so, or will always remain so. As certain endangered species recover, they reclaim their old birthing grounds, and large juvenile populations of pinnipeds in particular tend to attract sharks that are most frequently identified as having bitten humans.

They don’t need to be vilified for doing what comes naturally to them, but we do need to do a much better job of learning to respect their presence, and especially learning to predict where we’re most likely to encounter problems.

The proportions look good, but the scale looks supermassive compared to the tiny minifigures. This is what happens when you scale things to minifigure width instead of height. Speed Champions already looked unreasonable with minifigures; now the City sets are trending the same direction!

Annoying thing in beach sets is that one animal included is always shark!