Random set of the day: Dolphin Windsurfer
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 5844 Dolphin Windsurfer, released during 1998. It's one of 8 Belville sets produced that year. It contains 16 pieces and 1 minifig, and its retail price was US$5, which equates to about US$10 in today's money.
It's owned by 257 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you should find it for sale at Brick Owl, BrickLink, where new ones sell for around $20.20, or eBay.
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18 comments on this article
You can’t fool me. That’s not a dolphin windsurfing. That’s a girl!
Maybe the Dolphin's last name is Windsurfer?
Maybe be the girls name is Dolphin Windsurfer and the dolphin and windsurfer are merely coincidence.
1998 was probably the peak of humanity.
Surf on Dolphin Windsurfer.
I see that my reaction to the set's name was not unique.
@PurpleDave: Well...two things can be true at the same time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_(character)
Problem is; we KNOW TLG's 'stance' on DC and its characters...:)
It's interesting to see fully articulated mini doll before Friends minidolls.
Maybe the girl is an heir to the throne of France - the Dauphine. Dauphine W. Surfer, perhaps a close associate of famous aristocrat and international man of mystery, Christian W. Gifts.
If she is royalty-adjacent, that does suggest she might be hunting poor Flipper for sport. NCIS Belville should probably check that shovel for porpoise-DNA.
Oh, not using a dolphin as the board to windsurf on, yeah I guess that would be more ecologically sound
At least happy to see that Lego didn't continue down this path, because this was the sort of sets that brought them close to bankruptcy and losing all their fans.
Only 16 parts...
That windsail... I only now realize that that mast part debuted for Belcville and was only later used in vehicles such as 6572 Wind Runners, 6579 Ice Surfer, 6734 Beach Cruiser and my beloved 7416 The Emperor's Ship!
I never reaized how much bigger it is compared to the Paradisa windsurfer sail mast, which is minifig scale.
Funny to see the same board used here.
Btw I love the sunset lighting used here. And it's nice to see the set built here for once, as later Belville loves to show the instruction scan image of the first step in building: a pile of parts with a belville fig ready to ('help') build it.
@Lego_lord said:
"It's interesting to see fully articulated mini doll before Friends minidolls. "
I've written a bit about Belville. If you knew this already you can ignore this block of text :)
This was Belville, lego's 4th 'girls theme' the others were Homemaker (from before minifigs and slightly during), the 1980s Scala theme (jewelry, no relation to the 90s theme of My Dad infamy) and Paradisa (which included minifigs and featured pink prominently but was otherwise just a more relaxing version of Town). Belville was the first to feature an articulated type of doll figure, but these predated the minidoll by 22 years (from 1994 with Friends appearing in 2012). The earlier Belville figs were similar to Technic Figures in how they move, but later versions from ca. 2003 had more limited articulation.
The theme was present for a long time but by 2008 it winded down to make way for Friends, which was less reliant on unique parts and had the minidoll, which was a product of years of market research and was basically deliberately made to appeal more to young girls than the minifigure but to not be as expensive and cumbersome as the Belville figures. And Friends was minifig scale again like Paradisa had been, which meant more parts could be used from the broader parts catalog. In contrast Belville and Scala needed unique upscaled parts which were more expensive and hard to use elsewhere.
@Brickalili said:
"Oh, not using a dolphin as the board to windsurf on, yeah I guess that would be more ecologically sound"
Less slippery, too. Plus, that dolphin is swimming backwards, which has to be hard to control.
@Binnekamp said:
"That windsail... I only now realize that that mast part debuted for Belcville and was only later used in vehicles such as 6572 Wind Runners, 6579 Ice Surfer, 6734 Beach Cruiser and my beloved 7416 The Emperor's Ship!"
And, of course, 6534, which was my first set to have one.
Totally forgot about Random Set of the Day because of that incredible episode of Daredevil: Born Again.
Uh, something something, dolphin, something something, Belville, something something, it's so funny. Comedy.
@Binnekamp said:
"This was Belville, lego's 4th 'girls theme' the others were Homemaker (from before minifigs and slightly during), the 1980s Scala theme (jewelry, no relation to the 90s theme of My Dad infamy) and Paradisa (which included minifigs and featured pink prominently but was otherwise just a more relaxing version of Town)."
So where does the other Scala run fit into that timeline?
"In contrast Belville and Scala needed unique upscaled parts which were more expensive and hard to use elsewhere."
And yet a shocking number of those parts ended up carrying over into minifig-scale sets, with several probably still being in production this year. Sometimes it works. Other times it doesn’t. And the people in charge didn’t always have a good sense of which side of the line individual parts should have landed on. Usually when you see an accessory that looks like it was made for action figures, it came from Scala or Belville.
@PurpleDave said:
" @Binnekamp said:
"This was Belville, lego's 4th 'girls theme' the others were Homemaker (from before minifigs and slightly during), the 1980s Scala theme (jewelry, no relation to the 90s theme of My Dad infamy) and Paradisa (which included minifigs and featured pink prominently but was otherwise just a more relaxing version of Town)."
So where does the other Scala run fit into that timeline?"
It follows Belville. They coexisted for a few years, but Belville debuted in 1994 and Scala 2 in 1997
@brick_r said:
" @PurpleDave: Well...two things can be true at the same time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_(character)
Problem is; we KNOW TLG's 'stance' on DC and its characters...:)"
I just found out there’s a Clayface movie due out later this year, but a coworker said it’s supposed to be a horror movie. Guess that means no chance of seeing an official Clayface this year.
@PurpleDave said:
" @Binnekamp said:
"This was Belville, lego's 4th 'girls theme' the others were Homemaker (from before minifigs and slightly during), the 1980s Scala theme (jewelry, no relation to the 90s theme of My Dad infamy) and Paradisa (which included minifigs and featured pink prominently but was otherwise just a more relaxing version of Town)."
So where does the other Scala run fit into that timeline?
"In contrast Belville and Scala needed unique upscaled parts which were more expensive and hard to use elsewhere."
And yet a shocking number of those parts ended up carrying over into minifig-scale sets, with several probably still being in production this year. Sometimes it works. Other times it doesn’t. And the people in charge didn’t always have a good sense of which side of the line individual parts should have landed on. Usually when you see an accessory that looks like it was made for action figures, it came from Scala or Belville."
It's not as if minifigure sets were consistent with scale before Scala 2 and Belville came along. But then, minifigures don't have anything near correct human proportions, so why should scale be concern with sets that feature them?