Random set of the day: Nursery
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 3241 Nursery, released in 1997. It's one of 10 Scala sets produced that year. It contains 54 pieces and 2 minifigs, and its retail price was US$22.
It's owned by 29 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you might find it for sale at BrickLink or eBay.
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19 comments on this article
Are Scala dolls actually considered Minifigures? I don't think so. Before Friends, Lego's attempts to market towards girls were a bit awkward.
If this one comes two weeks later it could be much less random.
Jeez that kid looks creepy..
I love the hair and all the accessories!
I was aware of Scala but didn't realize the figs had actual hair. Kinda cool.
I find it kind of odd that the instructions (pictured above) show accessories that don't even come with the set, (for example, the brown shoes.) Let alone not showing a picture of the actual set itself.
Autons
I am genuinely confused about everything with this set. It's called Nursery except what does a cake, plants, and wine have to do with a nursery? And then I'm hearing that not even all the things shown in the image come with the set anyway. Sure enough, they aren't there in the pdf for the instructions. https://www.lego.com/biassets/bi/4108820.pdf And then we get to the own/want list. 29 people owning it is actually not all that surprising, but 21 people actually want it?! I wonder what the incentive is, because if it's for the parts I listed above, well then they are going to be disappointed. And speaking of the parts, I mean, whoa. This was still considered LEGO, but Bionicle and the other Constraction themes weren't? Give me a break! Granted, I am seeing a few studded pieces in there, but the majority of the connections in the set are by way of things I have never seen before with parts that appear to be large specialty pieces with seemingly limited connection points. However, when looking at the alternate models, there is a measure of modularity that one could find appealing. So yeah, quite the thing today.
29 members own this set??? I hope none of them are men! “But your honour, it was for collection purposes only. Those aqua shoes, I needed them in my parts inventory”
I have a pretty substantial Scala collection, and if I ever saw any to buy (that stuff wasn't easy to get hold of in the UK when I was a kid, let alone now), I'd buy it. Scala was INCREDIBLE. The fact it was made by Lego isn't important. They were fashion dolls, so you could change their clothes and hairstyles like Barbie etc, but unlike Barbie, you could build your own houses for these dolls over and over again to be whatever you wanted them to be. There was total freedom to change not just the furniture but the entire structure of the house, really easily. Forget the Lego branding, this was an amazing toy in its own right.
As for the no pictures of the set on the instructions thing, that really wasn't a problem. These sets came in boxes which did have a picture of the set on the front, so nobody would have bought a nursery set expecting cake and wine because those things weren't on the box. It's just a decorative pattern, which is the same on all the instruction booklets. Plus the instructions were pretty pointless after you'd first made the set: I imagine most girls did the same as me and combined all their sets for one big house, never to be separated again.
@meesajarjar72
Why shouldn't men own this set?
Your hope comes across as a shallow-minded preconception; compare it with someone who doesn't appreciate LEGO hoping that no adults own any.
Fair enough EmpressofGallifrey, I respect your passion. I really dig that each theme has their diehard fans. I found more images of this set on BrickLink and perhaps Brickset should snag some of them for the database. https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=3241-1T=I
@bananaworld... of course men can own this set, they just shouldn’t tell anyone. It’s just those dolls... so creepy. It was just a bit of a joke.
Unfortunately the only picture of the set itself was on the boxes of many Scala sets and even then some didn't have them, just a transparent panel. So, the instruction cover images we have are not representative of the set's contents.
DELET THIS
I used to really enjoy playing with my sister and her Scala sets, as EmpressofGallifrey says they were excellent toys in their own right.
Huw, could the catalogues maybe be a source of set images? I'm sure I have one somewhere that has Scala sets in it...
As LEGO this is pretty poor, but for a general toy, it's nice. Two well-crafted dolls, a slew of accessories, and a nice modular build.
As some people have stated above, I also find it odd that the completely Technic compatible Constraction figures were originally not included in Random Set of the Day but these barely system compatible ones were.
@Huw Check out the images on BrickLink. They have box art, and standard images without the box, both are much better than the front of the instructions. The only problem I see would be image size more than anything else.