'79! So one of the first sets with minifigures, I persume?

You know the thing that I miss? The nine-stud-wide road baseplates. With limited space for Lego collecting, those baseplates were great, because you could still fit town buildings and structures on either side of the street, to make up really cool scenes (if the buildings were skinny enough, you could even still have space for pavement).

Then the baseplates became 7 studs wide and you could fit buildings, but they were awfully close to the street, and there was no pavement.

I don't even buy road plates, these days. But with wider vehicles, I imagine the streets got wider too.

Reminds me of my first ever big set the 585 Police Headquarters from 1976 (https://brickset.com/sets/585-1/Police-Headquarters). I mention this because it's one of the handful of sets with the early transitional minifigs -- heads and hats but no arms and no separate legs. Hardly ever see those mentioned as they were overshadowed by the appearance of the true minifig. Though having said that I had to check Bricklink and I guess they were in 50 sets mostly from 75-77.

Something so charming about that brick-built motorcycle. It would be great to see more brick-built bikes/scooters in minifig scale will the plethora of small parts we have nowadays.

At a quick glance, I thought this was set 585 too! I briefly inherited 585 from my uncle before passing it on to my cousin... ultimately, it's kind of funny how little police station sets have changed in four decades.

@ChrisPChicken something like this?
https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-9265/diegoflorez84/black-motorbike/parts

This was one of my first sets. I remember it fondly.

I love that design. And those road plates you could actually build houses on!

Ahh, bliss.
Was also one of my first ever LEGO sets.
I bought a few job lots of these baseplates over the years in addition to those already in my original collection. Like them far more than those newer ones with wider roads and less studs. Plus the colour scheme of the older ones looks better to me. YMMV.

I perfectly remember spending long time looking at this one on catalogs, dreaming what I would imagine as adventurous moments and situations if I had it... But parents told me I had to choose : big castle sets, or big City ones? Could not afford all of them. Still remember that I checked the picture closely and made my own brick built motorcycle thanks to it.

It's always nice to see classic sets. Takes me back to my childhood.

I have this one! It was one of my first handful of sets... Was a HUGE upgrade at the time, after having had the original, early 1970's "Police Head-quarters" of similar design, which contained the faceless minis without movable arms/legs. =)

This set is part of my earliest Lego memories! I must have built it 100times. Ah, good memories!

My first LEGO police station! Unfortunately it is one of the few sets of my infantry I was not able to resume... too many missing or broken parts.
I think I'll buy it again sooner or later, but find the antenna in decent conditions (and at a decent price) is very difficult.

I have this, though it's been in pieces for 30-odd years. I don't even know how I got it as it came out three years before I born! I assume it was either handed down from elsewhere in the family or a charity shop purchase. Might try and dig it out this weekend - see what my five year old makes of it!

Was this the first of the dozens there have been? XD

I owned this set as a child. I remember marveling at the phone and water fountain. I wish I still had it. I wish sets still came with baseplates.

I love this set.

@Zordboy: And now with the Xtra playmats, the curbs are just 6 studs wide.

For a while now, part of me has wished that LEGO would completely re-imagine the road plate system in some more customizable form. After all, many sets have ceased using traditional baseplates at this point — a change for the better, in my opinion — while other sets like the Modular Buildings are designed with with sidewalks that go all the way to the edge of their bases and render the built-in curbs of the existing road plate standards somewhat irrelevant. It pains me at times to see the lengths builders go to transplant sets onto road plates, often upsetting the neat alignment they were designed to have with their original bases!

It seems to me that an ideal LEGO road system would be similar to the long-established system of LEGO train tracks in many respects:
• highly customizable
• proportionally defined in 8- or 16-stud intervals
• full plate thickness
• not designed strictly as a base, but rather with connections above and below to facilitate things like bridges and inclines
• not strictly locked to a rectangular grid
• individual segments small enough to appear in sets at a variety of price points (not just those big enough to justify a 32x32 or larger base)

Some of the ideas I've thought about for such a road system would involve parts such as https://brickset.com/parts/design-90498 (or similar parts in other sizes like 16x16) but decorated with road stripes, crosswalks, and other features. This one part alone would be adequate for creating any straight, T-shaped, and cross-shaped roads, with no more need for those three shapes to require unique molds.

Additionally, a new curved tile element could also be introduced — say, perhaps, a 45-degree curved tile with a 16-stud width and 16-stud radius at its midpoint (similar to how https://brickset.com/parts/design-53400 has a 22.5-degree curve and 40-stud radius at its midpoint, or https://brickset.com/parts/design-85976 has a 45-degree curve with a 24-stud radius at its midpoint). Two of these together would create a curve analogous to a current 32x32 curve road plate, but they could also be used individually by any builder wishing to go off the grid.

There are some issues with this earlier formulation of this idea, of course. With some bigger trucks even in LEGO City hitting eight studs wide, a 16-stud-wide road (friendly as those 8-stud intervals might be) may no longer be sufficient. I don't know whether it'd be totally practical or feasible to make a jump to 24-stud-wide roads from the current 20-stud standard, though I suppose it could be justified if they added a 2-stud-wide shoulder/bike path like in 6312-1 and 6313-1.

Great set and great memories. My brother was given 588 (virtually the same set) for Easter a day after I was born. We spent hours playing with this and other city sets.

I'm glad I still have some of these road plates that my kids can play with.

Before my time but is my fave structure from the Lego Star Wars bonus city zone

I always wanted this set as a kid, but I never got it. I think it was the helicopter that sold me.

I love this set! Built it with my dad back in the day and kept it in one piece until my son turned about 4 in 2010. He destroyed it, but I still have all the pieces and instructions. I can’t wait to rebuild it.

Woo!!!

One of my first Lego sets (I actually own its twin, set 588). I can still remember getting it for Christmas and building it at my grandparents' house. It's been in storage for years but I've finally purchased the missing pieces and replaced many of the damaged and worn pieces.

Aside from Classic Space this is as awesome a set as I'll ever see on Random Set of the Day.

This definitely brings back memories! My brother got this set, my cousin got the fire station and I got the coast guard set from our grandparents! Hours and days of play (and fights of course), but these kinds of memories brought me through my Dark Ages!

The first ever minifig police station and such a beautiful classic design. One set I wanted so badly as a kid but it was too expensive :( After getting the 6000 Ideas Book I wanted it even more, as it was used for quite a few builds in the book (including a Tudor style three storey house) and because of the book I discovered the set had two printed phone 1 x 2 slope pieces which for some reason fascinated me as a kid.

In 2016 I finally got this set.