Random set of the day: MX-71 Recon Dropship
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 7692 MX-71 Recon Dropship , released during 2007. It's one of 8 Space sets produced that year. It contains 435 pieces and 6 minifigs, and its retail price was US$39.99/£29.35.
It's owned by 2,643 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 $137.40, or eBay.
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35 comments on this article
Love the color scheme of Mars Mission. Just the perfect balance of white and orange with the blue to contrast. The aliens are also pretty cool with the black and lime with trans-neon green, and the sprinkling of trans-red to accent the weapons, but it's not nearly as iconic looking, although the shaping is definitely where they shine.
This theme genuinely did not get enough love. Imagine how incredible the sets would've looked today
I enjoyed it when Lego would drop a new Space subtheme every couple of years.
I am fortunate enough to have 3 sets from this theme. Alas, not this set though! Love Mars and it’s Mission!
I have this sets was amazing tha time Lego is really creative with their themes..unlike now.they become greedy and don't care about the playbility etc only for money money and killing the enthusiasm for the adults
Humans had some cool looking space ships like this but I mostly remember the alien ship designs from this theme. They were simply cooler.
@WolfpackBricks63 said:
"This theme genuinely did not get enough love. Imagine how incredible the sets would've looked today"
The recent city space stuff gives you an idea. 60431 has Mars Mission DNA.
@MCLegoboy said:
"Love the color scheme of Mars Mission. Just the perfect balance of white and orange with the blue to contrast. The aliens are also pretty cool with the black and lime with trans-neon green, and the sprinkling of trans-red to accent the weapons, but it's not nearly as iconic looking, although the shaping is definitely where they shine."
It's the last Space theme with truly inspired design language. In fact it's probably one of the most coherent themes ever. All the alien and astronaut ships, outside of simply colors, use similar elements. The alien ships have stickered quarter-saucers and 2x2 round tiles and the lime overhead restraints (though not on this one). The earthlings use the same transport pods, orange flexible tubes and Bionicle drills.
Also the surface vehicle appears to have been painted over an older version with a different windscreen.
The sets looked good, but the figs lacked in imagination. I’ve read that Lego wasn’t allowed to produce better aliens , because of starwars. The space sets had to be “human-based”? Space police 3 fixed that problem for me!
I've always wondered what happened in the intervening years to turn the little space-smurfs of Life On Mars into the Giger-esque monsters of Mars Mission...
I loved how simple the drop part of this dropship was, I’d never really thought of using those rubber parts like that. Upon building this set I instantly went and remodelled a few of little vehicles and MOCed up a bunch of extra stuff that it could also carry, like Thunderbird 2’s array
As much as I always welcome original themes and especially Space themes... Mars Mission never quite landed well for me. The hyper-aggressive builds are often skeletal technic frames with stuff plonked on top and the literal black vs white colorschemes are lacking in vibrancy and color outside of the trans neon green and orange highlights.
As a result this set too feels wonky and very front-heavy in its design, even though the frontmost portion looks nice. That section is on a ball-joint, weirdly enough. The tail feels way too thin for what it is, and the dropship mechanism is cool but ultimately just not really well-integrated because the rover just sits underneath awkwardly. For what it does it's a very big space-consuming shape.
It's a cool concept and the design works to some extent, but I just gravitate far more to anything after 2007's Mars Mission wave. Even the 2008 sets already feel a lot more substantial for what they do, and those have a lot less 'structure' sections.
The alien ship sidebuild is huge for a sidebuild btw. It's a cool design but I can't help but feel that it deviates a bit too much from the other Crystalien ship designs. But it undeniably uses very consistent elements such as the curved 'wings' on the sides and the triple-canon that's also seen on the ship in the 7690 MB-1 Eagle Command Base. It's a cool original design at least.
@ra226 said:
"I've always wondered what happened in the intervening years to turn the little space-smurfs of Life On Mars into the Giger-esque monsters of Mars Mission..."
These are not martians, but an alien species that crashlanded on Mars and have begun taking it over to mine the crystals. The actual Martians either are not from the same continuity, or they are in hiding. Or perhaps something worse happened to them...
I don't believe we had this set even though my brothers had a sizable amount of sets from the theme. We ended up donating most of them, although two remained, the trike and a small fighter. Of course, we ended up getting plenty of others sets to fill that void after we moved cross country. The aliens were annoying with how little articulation they had, but they had a cool design. Mars Mission wasn't one of my favorites, but I played the online game a lot.
I've thought about this as "the Halo theme" for quite some time, but I can't put it into specifics. Most of the designs aren't Halo-reminiscent at all; there was never a Warthog-type set, for example. I mostly think of it like this because of LEGO's April Fools joke, claiming they were doing Halo stuff and the Mars Mission aliens were somehow based on the Elites.
I read that as “bacon dropship”, and now there’s no way it could be anything but a disappointment.
I have 7644 and 7690, still the best spaceship Lego have produced and one of the best playsets ever.
Mars Mission was *the* Space theme when I was a kid. Absolutely loved it, despite only having 3 small sets.
Anyone else remember the C&C inspired flash game CrystAlien Conflict? Lego strategy games are something that's way too rare.
Solid instructions. Beautiful models and box art. Ominous of what is to come. I would buy this.
Drop ship works well, although unable to find picture of the rover attached? Using the UFO quarter slope bricks vertically for the sides of the alien craft was clever design.
@ambr said:
"Drop ship works well, although unable to find picture of the rover attached? Using the UFO quarter slope bricks vertically for the sides of the alien craft was clever design."
I couldn't find a picture either, but apparently that's because it's burried in there once attached. You can see Jang attach it to the dropship here at the 3:43 mark:
https://youtu.be/-EHFVMK-lEs
EDIT: I found a photo with it carrying the vehicle on board: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/fd/1d/d2/fd1dd2af4e9ecb1f1bc02601bccf3cc7.jpg
I take back what I said about the design. Seeing it again, the dropping function is better than I remember, and I now realize that it's supposed to be shaped like a sci-fi plane of a sort. I just didn't make the connection because 1. The cannon under the drooping wings is very bulky and 2. The angle of the promo image is frankly terrible. That doesn't excuse everything of course, but I now like the design a lot more for its funkiness, the same way as 7067 Jet-Copter Encounter is funky but unique.
I daresay this is amongst the best of the 2007 Mars Mission sets in terms of design.
War!
Would you like to know more?
I was squarely in the target age range when this theme was out.
I'd be interested to know whether people would prefer this kind of thing to what we get now. These would be cheaper for their size, but they're quite skeletal in design and very fragile. Modern sets are far more parts-dense, durable and integrate their play features better (though usually have less of them).
Not my kind of Space, but ok I guess.
Happened during my dark ages anyway, so don't really have any connections to it.
My Space involvement lasted from around 1979 to 1997, with one UFO set (6975) being the last Space set I had and basically the last set before the beginning of my dark ages too.
@chaosderek said:
"The sets looked good, but the figs lacked in imagination. I’ve read that Lego wasn’t allowed to produce better aliens , because of starwars. The space sets had to be “human-based”? Space police 3 fixed that problem for me!"
Heck yeah! I'd take Space Police 3 over Mars Mission any day!
@Rimefang said:"War!
Would you like to know more?"
What is it good for? All I know is that it never changes.
Mars Mission was the space theme when I was around the target age. My budget mainly went to Star Wars and Bionicle and I only ever got a small impulse set from this theme.
I got a used copy of this set a few months ago, but it looked like it came fresh out of the factory. No yellowing, no dust and perfectly applied stickers. The ship is lovely and the function works surprisingly well. The bar on the rover that is used to pick it up is only attached by two studs but it never comes off because the rover is so light.
@Lamarider said:
"I have 7644 and 7690, still the best spaceship Lego have produced and one of the best playsets ever."
You typed 10355 wrong.
@PurpleDave said:
" @Lamarider said:
"I have 7644 and 7690, still the best spaceship Lego have produced and one of the best playsets ever."
You typed 10355 wrong."
Or maybe they mistyped 10497?
@TheOtherMike said:
" @PurpleDave said:
" @Lamarider said:
"I have 7644 and 7690, still the best spaceship Lego have produced and one of the best playsets ever."
You typed 10355 wrong."
Or maybe they mistyped 10497?"
You mistyped it too!
@TheOtherMike said:
" @chaosderek said:
"The sets looked good, but the figs lacked in imagination. I’ve read that Lego wasn’t allowed to produce better aliens , because of starwars. The space sets had to be “human-based”? Space police 3 fixed that problem for me!"
Heck yeah! I'd take Space Police 3 over Mars Mission any day!
@Rimefang said:"War!
Would you like to know more?"
What is it good for? All I know is that it never changes."
War is hell. - William Tecumseh Sherman (American civil war general)
This might be my favorite Mars Mission set! The one con is the floppy cockpit. Besides that it's an excellent use of pieces and the alien craft has a unique vertical orientation compared to the rest of the line.
@Murdoch17 said:
" @TheOtherMike said:
" @chaosderek said:
"The sets looked good, but the figs lacked in imagination. I’ve read that Lego wasn’t allowed to produce better aliens , because of starwars. The space sets had to be “human-based”? Space police 3 fixed that problem for me!"
Heck yeah! I'd take Space Police 3 over Mars Mission any day!
@Rimefang said:"War!
Would you like to know more?"
What is it good for? All I know is that it never changes."
War is hell. - William Tecumseh Sherman (American civil war general)"
“ War Is the H-Word” - Futurama (most frequently cancelled series in American primetime)
@PurpleDave said:
" @Murdoch17 said:
" @TheOtherMike said:
" @chaosderek said:
"The sets looked good, but the figs lacked in imagination. I’ve read that Lego wasn’t allowed to produce better aliens , because of starwars. The space sets had to be “human-based”? Space police 3 fixed that problem for me!"
Heck yeah! I'd take Space Police 3 over Mars Mission any day!
@Rimefang said:"War!
Would you like to know more?"
What is it good for? All I know is that it never changes."
War is hell. - William Tecumseh Sherman (American civil war general)"
“ War Is the H-Word” - Futurama (most frequently cancelled series in American primetime)"
Bite my shiny metal A-Word!
I remember playing the Mars Mission game on lego.com, quite a good real time strategy game! Link to anyone who wants to play again - https://crystalien-redux.com/
I got a lot of the Mars Mission sets--close to all of the first year sets and one or two of the second. This is my favourite. It's just massive, in a way that I never had a Space set from the '90s. It's almost "TIE Fighter and Y-Wing" esque for having big opposing fighters--and they're about as fragile.
I have two of these. My favorite of the line! Note the mistake on the box aren't near the windshield of the small wheeled vehicle