Random set of the day: Whirling Time Warper
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 6496 Whirling Time Warper, released in 1997. It's one of 4 Time Cruisers sets produced that year. It contains 152 pieces and 2 minifigs, and its retail price was US$22.
It's owned by 743 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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I liked the evil Time Cruiser faction. It was another important step on the road to actual Lego supervillains, and I really really liked how they designed the 'treasure' aspect, taking round clear plates, as well as coins and jewels and wands and other nifty little bits, and putting them together as loads of treasure. I thought that was really cool.
According to THE LEGO BOOK, Time Cruisers vehicles were powered by hats,
That tells you all you need to know about the theme.
It’s weird.
Well its certainly a 'random' set of the day!
@Mr. Thrawn
Super Mario Odyssey says hi.
Interesting concept but I can't say i like them. It seems they have some sort of simple mechanism to move various part of the vehicles. I didn't notice at the time.
Great set. Time Cruisers and Time Twisters were a bit odd/weird. But it was the theme that connected all the existing themes. This year I build several MOC’s inspired by the TC and TT.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/137652851 @N07/39406196271/in/album-72157674645708043/
When does LEGO Island celebrate its birthday? My favourite minifig of this theme. Did like the head on this set’s guy but I liked it better as a Western bandit.
These guys were so weird, just a random mish mash of parts. With skulls in top hats jumping up and down like pistons. Were these guys even connected to the other time cruisers in any way? Or did they just have some skeleton and ghost pieces they needed to use up?
@Brickalili - these guys were villains, I believe they may have been called Time Twisters? They went around messing with time where the Cruisers just had adventures in it.
I loved this set as a kid, a stock of nice unusual parts, especially that whirling blue/black time warp piece.
Except for this one I still have all Time Cruisers and Time Twisters sets MISB, even the Flying Time Vessel, the Twisted Time Train and the Mystic Mountain Lab!
The weirdness of this theme has grown on me and I really like this flying bath tub! At least this theme showed a lot of LEGO originality. One might think this is all assembled from leftovers, but at least this theme came with many diverse pieces in a lot of colours and offered many different Minifigure accessories! As @sanderkoenen said, these Time Cruisers connected all different Lego Worlds and themes and I guess the Time Twisters were there to try and stop the Cruisers from connecting the dots.
Just Imagine....
This is the weirdest set I've ever seen.
Back then and now: why on earth did they do it. I did and do not like the theme.
This set looks like somebody at Lego had some spare parts and put them together. Weird theme. It’s released in my dark age. So no nostalgia here.
Amazing theme. I miss time Lego was zany
I had - and actually still have - the Mystic Mountain Time Lab from this theme. I remember it turned up cheap at the local toy shop when I was a kid, a couple of years after its release; and I'd never heard of the theme before, but convinced my parents to buy it for my birthday. It was a pretty neat set... and, quite honestly, with hindsight I feel it was the most coherent of the entire theme.
I didn't even know any of the others had existed until years after, but the Time Twisters ones especially do look like just a big mishmash of everything... I don't really know what to think of them, honestly.
But I still love Mystic Mountain even now. It was the first semi-large Lego set I ever owned, and will always have a massive soft spot with me.
For all the criticism of Time Cruisers’ hodgepodge of elements from different themes, I think the villainous Time Twisters succeeded much more at creating a unified aesthetic with their tendency towards spooky colors and motifs. And the Time Cruisers sets in general had a level of creative functionality that few sets before them did. In this case, as the wheels turned, The dragon heads, crossbows, and top-hatted skulls bobbed up and down while the propeller, hypno-disk, and cylinder of historical treasures (which powered the entire time machine) rotated, tumbling the cylinder’s contents around.
Another fun quirk of this set: its cockpit was constructed from a Belville bathtub! Weird as it was, it was an excellent and fun model, and it was great later on to see other themes like Power Miners embrace a similar level of functional intricacy.
The Minifigure from this set is actually the same as one of the Fright Knights from the same year, only dressed up with a police officer cap and epaulettes instead of the dragon helmet.
In the UK he was known as 'Commodore Schmidt'. His companion from the other Time Twisters sets reused the head from a Western bandit on a black leather Jacket from Town and was called 'Baron Blomberg'. Another Time Twisters character was a skeleton with a blue wizard's hat from set 6497 called 'Boney'.
In the US, the two were known as Tony Twister and Professor Millenium. The German name for the bandit guy was 'Captain Spooky'.
This was such a bizarre line, but it let the designers show some real creativity, and gave some parts we hadn't seen in a while a new lease of life.
Lego at its best!!