Featured set of the day: Crystal Explorer Sub
Posted by Huw,
Welcome to what I hope will be a regular series of articles. Every day we plan to feature a classic set that holds some significance to a Brickset reader, and we will ask them to explain why.
To kick things off I'm going to start with 6175 Crystal Explorer Sub.
I emerged from my dark ages in 1995 and initially my interest was in Technic, as it was when I entered them in 1979. However, that year the first Aquazone sets were released and for some reason they immediately caught my eye. I think it must have been the futuristic design, attractive colour scheme and cool minifig helmets.
6175 Crystal Explorer Sub was the mid-range set of that first wave. It featured the good guys of the theme, the Aquanauts. Unlike many of today's sets there was no conflict in the box: just divers peacefully going about their exploratory business with no weapons in sight. If you wanted conflict, other sets in the range could be purchased to provide it.
Believe it or not, it was the first set containing minifigures that I owned (I was slipping into my dark ages when they first appeared in 1978). To today's standards the Aquanauts and their helmets look crude but they were innovative compared to their contemporaries.
Looking back at it now, I don't think the set has aged well. I think it's the angular design, parts jutting out all over the place and, in particular, the octagonal pieces that the theme introduced, many of which have not been used since, that give it its dated look. Nevertheless, like the minifigs, it holds a special place in my heart.
Now, over to you... write something about a set that has significance to you and we'll publish it as a featured set of the day. Please use the contact form to do so. I can't wait to see what you pick!
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48 comments on this article
Nice start of this series, Huw!
Those propeller housings could be very useful to me if I had some in gray. Hmm...
For a second I thought you maybe rescheduled RSotD, lol.
I'd been hoping for full reviews of past sets, but this is no doubt a good compromise.
This was a great theme. 6145 Had that weird vacuum formed baseplate that didn't have any studs and was just blue crystal formations.
The father of a friend of mine runs a house clearing business and was emptying the loft of a deceased old lady last year. Up there they found this Crystal Explorer sealed in the box and put it aside for me as knew I’d be interested! Although somewhat painful to do, I thought as I’d received it for free I should probably open and build it - and it certainly didn’t disappoint :) I have it on display in my house now!
I received 6175 for my 9th birthday. Aquanauts was a watery twist on Classic Space, and I can't seem to conjure up much nostalgia for it, personally. The theme reflects a general shift to Earth-based sci-fi in the mid-90s that was spurred by films like Jurassic Park and Congo. It featured detailed minifigure drysuit accessories, chrome metallic crystals, knives, and harpoons, octopuses, and trans-orange highlights like propellers and boxes.
These sets were built for kids to play with first and foremost. The play features include two robotic arms, one of which was equipped with a magnet, for picking up the crystal boxes, which could then be stored inside the sub. The Aquanauts and Aquasharks were rival factions that would presumably engage in undersea combat with each other over the crystals, and kids were free to use their imagination to create a plot.
This submarine was hands-down my top wishlist item as a kid. I loved this theme, as well as how they staged the underwater sets in the booklets and magazines.
I've got its rival the Deep Sea Predator when it was new. Had tons of fun with it over the years and got replacement parts a few years back to restore it to its full glory. Eventually I'll track a secondhand copy of this down too.
Think I was 20 when I started working in a toy and hobby shop just as the Aquazone sets came out. I immediately asked if I could build a couple for the front window. I had dipped into dark ages about eleven years prior, so something about this theme just got me all worked up. I bought all but one of the sets that year, and the following.
I rebuilt them a couple years back for my kids to play with. We all loved them. So much stuff to do with each set, and the magnets. I think they've aged fine!
News getting better and better.. got this as a kid and i absolutely loved it! real magnets, a real compass?! I played the hell out of it.
indeed a very good compromise between a full review and a more personal approach. Interesting and similarly, my dark ages ended 1989/90 playing Duplo with my 15 months old first son. From 1993 our boys were flooded increasingly with Lego sets at birthdays and Xmas. The Aquazone world was the first environment where we had more or less all sets so the universe in the children's room was under water. Unfortunately they decided much later to sell much of the stuff on eBay so the only sets I was able to save were the two little shark subs. Huw, the Rescue topic and sets might be another promising target for your next review? I very much appreciate your mention of the peaceful character of Aquazone, as opposed to many of today's sets...
(Tears), I loved this set alot until I used it for parts.
Those compass pieces were cool. Not sure what good it’s doing on top of the sub though.
I had Aquasharks sets of the same year.
May I ask which option for the "What would you like to contact us about?" query I should select in order to contribute?
Funny that you begin with this! This was the last set I can remember buying before entering my dark ages. I was always a Space and Pirates kid, but the cool new underwater theme looked awesome to me. I can distinctly remember being a little embarrassed buying this as a 16 year old but I'm glad I did now.
This sub my be best Aquazone sub made. Deep Sea Predator gets close with shark like shape, but there is just something special about the color scheme, Black and yellow stand out with the transparent blue and neon orange details. Plus chrome pieces. Very enjoyable build.
Yes, this is an awesome article series! Here is what I had to say about this set when it was featured as the Random Set of the Day:
"Aquazone was a radical new theme that really shook up the System (Town, Space, Castle, Pirate)! It introduced two new science-fiction factions at once, the hydrolator-seeking Aquanauts and the fiendish thieving Aquasharks. My first Aquazone set was the Aquashark Shark Scout, which was fascinating enough to confirm I needed the whole theme! But at that stage in my Lego fandom, that was a wild dream. I might as well have envisioned owning TLG one day.
Then, an unexpected and horrible event occurred in my life: I contracted walking pneumonia, and enough water filled up my lungs that I had to be sent to the hospital, where I spent the next several weeks hooked up to life support and all manner of unfriendly-looking things. For a six year old, it was a bewildering, surreal experience. I had no idea how scared my parents were for me; apparently, pneumonia can be a death sentence for the very young or very old if left untreated too long. But thankfully, I made it out alive, and came home to a much-relieved family.
They were so relieved, as it turns out, that they made my homecoming extra-special. There on my bed were TWO Aquazone sets: Deep Sea Predator and the set featured today, the Crystal Explorer Sub! Finally, an Aquanaut set and some of those cool chrome crystals! So many fascinating new parts in general, and given to me not for a birthday or Christmas occasion! I thanked my parents profusely and got to work on the two sets. While Deep Sea Predator looked the coolest, the Crystal Explorer Sub had more playability with the multiple stations for minifigures, the working compass, and some sea life in the form of an octopus (!) and seaweed! The poster included really showed off the environment of Aquazone really well, further honing my imagination. Many undersea battles were fought between my CES and DSP (with the Shark Scout often acting as a getaway vehicle). Later in the year, the Lego MANIA Magazine introduced instructions for a hybrid vehicle of 1995 sets from each theme, and I gleefully transplanted the propeller section from the CES onto my Royal King's Carriage.
The set is still treasured by me, and I recently dusted it off before carefully repacking it in the original box. It's definitely a quality set that I will hopefully pass on to my children someday, though I hope not after a near-brush with death!"
Great story, Huw! Glad to know this is set is special to others.
stonewars.de has a very nice retrospect about aquazone ... it's german so maybe not for everyone, but still worth a visit for the pictures and maybe some autotranslate.
https://www.stonewars.de/wissenswertes/lego-aquazone-geschichte/
I loved this set. I was 12 when Aquazone made it's debut, and I knew I had to have this set. It's so gorgeous. Just when I'd made the decision to start saving up for me, my father came back from a business trip with it as a present. That was the best day ever.
@Train_of_Thought_Creations said:
"May I ask which option for the "What would you like to contact us about?" query I should select in order to contribute?"
Contact the site operator will do. They all end up in the same helpdesk system :-)
@Lego_Lord_Mayorca, what a lovely story, thank you for posting it!
I *just* missed Aquazone, coming out of my dark ages at the end of 1998, but it's one of those lines I've gone back to, to fill that mid-1990s gap (my dark age was quite brief, starting in 1993!)
One of my fav sets! Still have it.
Fun fact, this set was the Random Set of the Day on June 5th, 2018!
I'm kind of questioning the "just divers going about their daily business, with no weapons in sight" perception. After all, from the very beginning, Aquazone unambiguously revolved around competing factions, both of whom carried chrome knives and harpoons. Even this set features an octopus as a potentially dangerous/threatening creature (which is depicted here facing off against the submarine's flexible grabber arm, as if intending to defend its territory from this large and unfamiliar intruder), while many other sets included sharks.
In spite of LEGO's reluctance to show actual physical altercations on the packaging, there's no doubt that the designers were making a purposeful choice to include the necessary elements for kids to role-play conflict scenarios if they chose to do so — just as they had already been doing for over a decade in previous themes like Space, Castle, and Pirates.
This sort of waffling on the issue of violence persisted all the way into the mid-2000s: Bionicle and Knights' Kingdom action figure sets routinely included aggressive-looking weapons like swords and gear-driven play features to make the characters strike at and incapacitate each other, but the tie-in animations, books, comics, and video games for these themes still took special care to avoid showing characters physically striking (or even ATTEMPTING to physically strike) one another with their weapons — instead, they could only use them to interact with their surroundings or fling magic/energy attacks back and forth.
Truthfully, I see the more overt conflict scenarios in recent themes like Ninjago, Nexo Knights, and Elves less as a mark of the company's toys becoming more aggressive, and more as sign that they're now permitted to show that sort of play in an honest, sincere, and non-judgmental way, instead of tacitly facilitating conflict play while outwardly acting as if that sort of play is beneath them.
Aside from that, I do have a lot of nostalgia for Aquazone. It had a lot of big specialty parts of the sort that frustrated a lot of AFOLs during the 90s and 2000s, but even so, many of its most distinctive parts were loads of fun to build and play with, like the octagonal tube elements, huge transparent canopies, and propellers that spin when you blow on them.
I also found the otherworldly undersea setting really captivating. While the initial "Seatron" concept was clearly set on an alien planet, Aquazone was not expressly portrayed as such in its marketing materials. This approach effectively foreshadowed themes like Bionicle, Ninjago, Elves, and Nexo Knights which are "high fantasy" in the traditional sense — rather than being set in a fictionalized past, present, or future of "our" universe, they portray universes that are separate from ours and behave according to their own set of rules.
@saturnfig said:
"This was a great theme. 6145 Had that weird vacuum formed baseplate that didn't have any studs and was just blue crystal formations."
???
6145 didn't come with a baseplate at all.
What on Earth are you referring to?
As far as I know the Time Cruisers comics aren't canon, but there is a fun little detail in them about Aquazone. Apparently the planet the Aquanaughts and Aquasharks were raiding for energy crystals was actually the planet the Zotaxians settled on in Insectoids, just deeper in the planet's core and closer to it's energy source. A neat detail I've kept in my headcanon.
@Huw said:
" @Train_of_Thought_Creations said:
"May I ask which option for the "What would you like to contact us about?" query I should select in order to contribute?"
Contact the site operator will do. They all end up in the same helpdesk system :-)"
Thank you very much Huw! Lovely site you run here!
@AustinPowers said:
" @saturnfig said:
"This was a great theme. 6145 Had that weird vacuum formed baseplate that didn't have any studs and was just blue crystal formations."
???
6145 didn't come with a baseplate at all.
What on Earth are you referring to? "
Wrong. See https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemInv.asp?S=1728-1&viewItemType=G
@AustinPowers said:
" @saturnfig said:
"This was a great theme. 6145 Had that weird vacuum formed baseplate that didn't have any studs and was just blue crystal formations."
???
6145 didn't come with a baseplate at all.
What on Earth are you referring to? "
I think 1728 came with the baseplate. Same set as 6145, but 1728 came packaged with the studless blue crystal baseplate.
This was one of my favorites as a kid. I really miss the old style, thicker manipulator arms and claws, although the newer clicky-jointed ones are a lot sturdier.
This was actually my first large set as a kid and probably one of the reasons I got hooked into Lego. (I mean, the minifig head I used in my avatar came from this set.) Nostalgia definitely plays a heavy roll in this, but I very much like the color scheme and octagonal designs used here. (The magnets were also fun, although those arms definitely weren't.)
You say dated, I say retro!
@Huw what a set to start this series with! This wasn't my first Lego set, but it was the one that got me to fall in love with Lego. Got this set for my 8th birthday and had the Aquasharks and Raiders a year later. I could probably rebuild this set with my eyes closed.
@AustinPowers said:
"6145 didn't come with a baseplate at all.
What on Earth are you referring to? "
1822 came with a weird vacuum formed plate: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/lego-1822-aquazone-sea-claw-huge-lot-20085193
@Huw Just a question but what are the parameters for a said ‘classic’ set?
^ None. Anything goes! If it's classic to you, that's enough...
@Huw said:
"^ None. Anything goes! If it's classic to you, that's enough..."
Ok then. Think I've got one in mind
Ah... Some time ago (very long ago) I had thus precious thing!
Lovely sub, futuristic design although somewhat fragile due to many hinges.
Now I'm considering what set I might be able to write one of these about, heh xD I guess I'll wait to see a few more days' examples before submitting anything, though... give myself more time to think on what set I'd actually want to talk about, too ^^
Aquazone was one of my favorites (along with castle and pirates) and I acquired most of the sets thanks to my first job delivering newspapers prior to my dark age which lasted from 1997 to about 2012. There were many epic battles between the aquasharks and aquanauts spanning our house. (I usually favored the sharks with their sleek lines and nose art reminiscent of fighter planes.) The set that always eluded me though was 6195 Neptune discovery lab.
When my kids started playing Lego, it brought me out of my dark age, and my sets out of storage. They absolutely love the colors and all of the play features. Finally about a year ago, we stumbled upon the Lab at a garage sale! Imagine my surprise and joy. Epic undersea battles once again rage across our house this time with the Lab with in its full glory as the central point of the conflict.
I really liked the chromed knives in these sets . . . I wonder why Lego got away from that?
Here is a great article in German about the Aquazone theme https://www.stonewars.de/wissenswertes/lego-aquazone-geschichte/
@Kerr said:
"I think 1728 came with the baseplate. Same set as 6145, but 1728 came packaged with the studless blue crystal baseplate. "
Quite likely a regional exclusive. I had 6145 back in the day and I can say for sure that it didn't come with any baseplate, let alone such an interesting one.
Pity that we over here never got such bundles like 1728 or 1822.
Come to think of it, prior to perusing Brickset I had never even heard of four-digit set numbers that began with a 1.
Came put about the same time as the Johnny Quest revival, and fit right in with that target.
Awesome set! I love the Crystal Explorer sub as it was one of my first sets as well. The Aquazone theme is the first one I collected outside of my brother's collection and I still have it on display to this day. Aquanauts vs Aquasharks forever!
One of my all-time favourite themes. I just loved the idea of this futuristic based submarine theme. I loved watching Seaquest DSV and the Abyss. I was also watching DS9 at the time and thought I would write a story around Aquazone, which I still have somewhere. I even remember giving the characters ranks indicated by different coloured right arms. Fast forward to the last few years and rather than do classic space MOCS I decided to do Aquazone re-imagined. I have done a few MOCs, recently and featured my Aqua Shark MOC in the LEGO Store at Sheffield. Now I'm working on a large scale version of 6195-1 Neptune Discovery Lab. Got some extra time now to spend it to I can exhibit at Shows in the future.