Random set of the day: Robotics Invention System
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 9747 Robotics Invention System, released in 1999. It's one of 10 Mindstorms sets produced that year. It contains 726 pieces, and its retail price was US$200.
It's owned by 951 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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12 comments on this article
You know? I was almost disappointed it wasn't a Sports or Clikits set.
Now that's random! And it's one I actually own!
Now we'll probably be stuck in Sports, Clikits, and Mindstorms!
Huwbot must have had some money to show this lol.
I like the ones that actually show what the set is instead of box art.
^ Sadly, the box art was actually better than the set.
This set was used in a trial/test of an Intro to Robotics class my last year at university. I was deep in my dark ages in ‘99 but jumped at the chance to sign up. The class was a blast and I swore I’d get one of these of my own the next year once I got a “real” job after graduation. Never did though & the dark ages lasted another decade.
This set is supposed to be what.
^ A robotics invention system....like it says on the box art.
Oh man, you kids don't know how cools this was when this came out. You're spoiled for electronics. We barely had phones that could make calls, and suddenly you can make a freaking ROBOT out of Lego?
Nothing compares.
I'll grant you that Lego was a little ambiguous with some of their box art around this period though!
I recently received this set as a gift from some friends who were moving away and who were wedding through their now late adolescent children's toys. I went through the box and it was about 95% complete, but I can't figure out how to use it with Windows 10 (the software for programming the Mindstorms aspect of it runs on Windows 95 or 98 only). Anyone have any ideas?
Now that's a proper classic! It wasn't the first set after my dark ages but certainly the one that put the final nail in the coffin....
For what it's worth, this is the instruction art, not the box art. The box was pretty minimalist on the front but was that lift-the-flap versions they used to do back then, with more detailed pics of the contents when you opened it:
Flap (outside): https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/004AAOSwFdtXxH4r/s-l1600.jpg
Flap (inside, left): https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/tH0AAOSwFV9XxH4-/s-l1600.jpg
Flap (inside, right): https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/s-4AAOSwFV9XxH46/s-l1600.jpg
A lot of older set images on Brickset are just the front cover of the LEGO.com instruction manual scans, so criticizing the box art based on those images is a rare example of mistakenly judging it by what turns out NOT to be its cover!