Kind of feels like the other vehicle should have been a boat, but I guess if the offroader can handle the water, fair enough.

How was this not already on my wanted list? I love seaplanes.

I can't figure out why the truck has an oar

I can't figure out why the truck has an oar

That plane design looks very good.

Swamp Police was peak.

@TheOtherMike:
6075-2. Also, a new member of my LUG recently finished the Sea Duck from TailSpin:

https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-243143/Anira/the-sea-duck/details

@jkb:
I wasn't saying _you'd_ built the Yellow Castle four years earlier. I was saying _I_ had. And I think I got started on LEGO sets at age 3, at a time when there was no Duplo and (for a little bit yet) no minifigs. I don't remember paying much attention to the instructions with my first set, but it was a Universal Building Set, so the set wasn't really designed around one notable model, but I think it was the next year that my brother and I got our only plank minifig sets, and the year after that we got proper minifigs. At that point, I always dove straight into the instructions.

@Rimefang:
Well, how else are you going to paddle in the water?

@PurpleDave: Love that Sea Duck, pass on my compliments to your LUG member! I loved that show as a kid; one major reason I got 31064. Sure, it might not have been an *official* TaleSpin set, but it was close enough for me!

@Brickalili said:
" @Rimefang said:
"I can't figure out why the truck has an oar"

Looking at the set’s other images, that’s a detachable raft on the truck’s back, our crook here is driving to somewhere watery and attempting to paddle to freedom. Which just leaves one question:

Whose side is that crocodile on?"

If we take the LEGO Movie universe as canon, the crocodile is obviously not on the police side because of the glaring lack of a police hat and blue/red lights on its back!

@HuskyDynamics said:
" @Brickalili said:
" @Rimefang said:
"I can't figure out why the truck has an oar"

Looking at the set’s other images, that’s a detachable raft on the truck’s back, our crook here is driving to somewhere watery and attempting to paddle to freedom. Which just leaves one question:

Whose side is that crocodile on?"

If we take the LEGO Movie universe as canon, the crocodile is obviously not on the police side because of the glaring lack of a police hat and blue/red lights on its back!"

Solid logic, I guess we can conclude that this is in fact a crookodile and our police protagonist might need a bit more than a set of handcuffs…

@Brickalili said:
" @HuskyDynamics said:
" @Brickalili said:
" @Rimefang said:
"I can't figure out why the truck has an oar"

Looking at the set’s other images, that’s a detachable raft on the truck’s back, our crook here is driving to somewhere watery and attempting to paddle to freedom. Which just leaves one question:

Whose side is that crocodile on?"

If we take the LEGO Movie universe as canon, the crocodile is obviously not on the police side because of the glaring lack of a police hat and blue/red lights on its back!"

Solid logic, I guess we can conclude that this is in fact a crookodile and our police protagonist might need a bit more than a set of handcuffs…"

Or maybe the croc is on the side of the law and is an undercover or plainclothes agent.

@TheOtherMike said:
" @PurpleDave: Love that Sea Duck, pass on my compliments to your LUG member!"

The design wasn’t finalized when she showed it to me at the first meeting she attended, and she asked my opinion on two options for the lower edge of the windshield, and I suggested a third option. The next thing I know, she’d run with my idea and come up with at least three more designs. And we kinda worked through a few other parts of the building like that, where I would suggest a part or technique that she wasn’t aware of, and she’d improve on it almost every single time, so almost none of my ideas actually made it into the final build. Plus, because I was getting images of part or all of the plane periodically, I noticed a lot of other improvements she was making on her own during this process.

I did suggest the design for the center spar on the cockpit, which she said she’d already tried and rejected, but then realized that the first change with the cockpit allowed her to added the other two spars to separate the windshield into quarters. And when the parts used to hinge the control surfaces proved nearly impossible to source at that time, I suggested two techniques that she didn’t know were possible. One is that you can feed a 3mm bar or hose through _spme_ Technic pins, which allows you to link them together into one giant pin. And the other (which few AFOLs may even be aware of) is that most 1x bricks have grooves formed inside that are perfectly located so a Technic pin can click into them (this is used on the small flaps on the leading edge of the wings). I think that’s the only suggestion of mine that made it into the final build in a way that’s actually visible.

She just started collecting the parts to build Don Karnage’s Triple Terror next. That design was a lot more polished by the time I first saw it, so I think I only made two suggestions on a more stable way to build a design improvement she posted to me, which in turn allowed her to add the gun sight.

One other design that went through this same process was her nBSG Viper. The entire thing looked fantastic…except the pixelated stripe on the wings. I showed her one method for adding a diagonal stripe, and set off an avalanche of redesigns. Sometimes I’d point out a piece, or a technique, or even send an extensive redesign, only to get back 2-3 redesigns in return. Eventually, this process resulted in wings that looked like they were designed by a completely different person, and even the engines and vertical stabilizer underwent significant modifications.

From what she told me, she used to build as a kid, and entered her dark ages in her early teens. Then she got back into it within just the last five years, so the breadth of her knowledge on what’s possible isn’t that great, but she soaks up new ideas like a sponge, and can innovate off of nearly every suggestion I can come up with. She is already proving to be a very fun addition to our club, and I am going to enjoy watching her grow as a builder.

"I loved that show as a kid; one major reason I got 31064. Sure, it might not have been an *official* TaleSpin set, but it was close enough for me!"

Well, yeah, a bit of color swapping and that would make a pretty decent playscale Sea Duck. And it’s about as accurate as some of the MOC designs I ran across when looking up stills from the show.

The day I learned RSotD selected sets that were ten years old or older set me up for regular sobering experiences. I still think of this crocodilian design as the “new” one.

Great memories with this one. Remember getting it at Disney Land when I was a kid and building it the same night. Nostalgia. A few years later, and I remember seeing this one on shelves pretty close, was not getting 75087 . Both for value, and for a better set. Also, I could be misremembering, but I never saw this set in catalogs. I saw all the others, and even got some, but I never saw this one. That was part of the reason little kid me wanted this instead of something else.

[edit] *reads the page to this set* Ah, that would be why.