I wonder how many of those 70's boats could actually float without capsizing.

I guess this is before the standard of making sure even LEGOLAND was all capitalized. Interesting times. And I'm aware that my name also does not conform to the standards but it's from a time before I knew the rules.

"The tugboat, for its size, is the most powerful craft afloat"

You must be tuggin' my boat

@PurpleDave said:
" @Maxbricks14 said:
"I wonder how many of those 70's boats could actually float without capsizing."

There's a weighted keel that you could attach to the bottom of the hull, which would seriously boost their stability."

Yeah. I'm not sure if all of them came with one though.

@Maxbricks14 said:
" @PurpleDave said:
" @Maxbricks14 said:
"I wonder how many of those 70's boats could actually float without capsizing."

There's a weighted keel that you could attach to the bottom of the hull, which would seriously boost their stability."

Yeah. I'm not sure if all of them came with one though."

Probably not, but you only needed the keel if you were putting it in water. Playing on the floor, you didn’t, so straight out of the box was fine.

I had this set. I still have the keel. The hull pieces got taken out to the ditch by my brother, and didn't survive the rocks.

@GSR_MataNui said:
"You must be tuggin' my boat"

Speak for yourself, Huwbot's floating mine.

"If they made tugboats bigger, they could be the boats other boats tug." - Ajax, Duckman.

@PurpleDave said:
" @Maxbricks14 said:
" @PurpleDave said:
" @Maxbricks14 said:
"I wonder how many of those 70's boats could actually float without capsizing."

There's a weighted keel that you could attach to the bottom of the hull, which would seriously boost their stability."

Yeah. I'm not sure if all of them came with one though."

Probably not, but you only needed the keel if you were putting it in water. Playing on the floor, you didn’t, so straight out of the box was fine."

On the floor or, as looks to be the case in the picture, in really shallow water

@Maxbricks14 said:
"Yeah. I'm not sure if all of them came with one though."

Weirdly enough, if you check the "Boats" theme, only 19 sets show up, and not all of those do have those floating hull pieces. All of the sets that do, do however include at least one keel piece, some bigger ones 2 or 3. Even a tiny boat like 314 does include one. Guess even Lego realized selling a floating boat that would only capsize wouldn't make them look good...
(and back then they still cared)

I still have 4025, the pride of my (pre-Technic) childhood, and that included three keels, which was more than it needed. The cool thing was that those later keels had a ridge you could attach a motor to. I don't think those were ever sold by Lego themselves, but interestingly those were also compatible with Playmobil.

EDIT: the tag "Floats on water" probably gives a more comprehensive overview of sets using those hull pieces, and all of the old school ones do come with a keel, including the Minitalia sets. Seems like they only stopped doing so with the sets in the late 80s, using the bigger single piece hulls.

It didn't choose the tug life. The tug life chose it.

Got one of these when I was 9yrs old.
It came with a keel and survived a wind assisted trip across the local boating lake.
Rebuild recently with my granddaughter.

I like the little radar build. And it's not even an illegal technique, as that's a tile.

The float pieces are next to our bathtub as we speak... Unfortunately the keel eventually rusted through somewhere last year and the hull pieces are really deformed, but the kid doesn't seem to care about that. I remember using the keel as weight for underwater planes when I was real small. Simple sets, good fun.

Wow, I had this one in around '75-'76 or so, that's about FIFTY years ago ??

Would be cool to see LEGO make this boat hull in red/white : 60456 Police Boat , for inspiration, could be based on something like 6543 Sail N' Fly Marina , which has a red/white boat too.

It occurs to me that Lego is, once again, making floating boats whose hulls are made of multiple parts. The more things change...

Is the Tugboat's name Theodore? Or perhaps Ten Cents?

I don't know why but I keep seeing a 1960's Ford Transit Van on a ferry?

@ambr said:
"I don't know why but I keep seeing a 1960's Ford Transit Van on a ferry?"

I can't unsee that now....

@MCLegoboy said:
"I guess this is before the standard of making sure even LEGOLAND was all capitalized. Interesting times. And I'm aware that my name also does not conform to the standards but it's from a time before I knew the rules."

hmmm, nice catch