Featured set of the day: Hook and Ladder
Posted by Huw,
MrJackson takes us back to mid-1990s Town for today's featured set:
I've been into Lego since my first set was given to me by a good friend of my father's back when I was around 5 years old. I’m not 100% sure, but I believe it was set 6604 Formula 1 Racer. I distinctly remember the slope with the number 1 printed on it, but everything else is lost to time.
I'm now 35 with a 3 year old son and 4 day old daughter and I'm very much back into the hobby after the usual college years Dark Ages. My journey back to Lego included a 4-year stop working at a local Lego Brand Retail Store, with the final 3 years as a shift supervisor.
That time yielded a number of UCS sets, including my favourite Star Wars vehicle, the Super Star Destroyer, the modulars, eventually most of the Creator Expert vehicles beginning with the VW Camper, and finally gaining an appreciation, and eventual love, for building Technic.
Ultimately, I’m a City person, having grown up in the 90s with wonderful, and in many cases, timeless, Town sets: 6597 Century Skyway, 1682 Space Shuttle Launch, 6344 Jet Speed Justice (phenomenal name), 6350 Pizza To Go, and 6561 Hot Rod Club, to name just a few.
Two years ago, I finally completed my Lego City, Brickadelphia, in the basement. It’s a decent size, 8’x11’, with sprinklings of classic Town intermixed with modulars and other, more modern sets, like 31065 Park Street Townhouse and 31012 Family House.
Like every well-run town, there need to be fire stations! 6389 Fire Control Centre supports the 10197 Fire Brigade in firefighting duties. However, the former only has a very futuristic tanker, a jeep, and, of course, a helicopter. Not nearly enough for a multi-alarm fire. Even kid-version of me knew this, so fire trucks were high on my list of wanted sets. I used to get the Lego S@H catalogues every quarter or however often and cross off the sets that I had as it was easier than asking for what I wanted. Remember, this was a time when sets would sit on the shelf and in the catalogues for years, rather than the months (at best) that some are available nowadays for.
Chief among those sets is the 6340 Hook & Ladder. It had the AWESOME grey-suited firefighter with the still very new oxygen masks that finally connected the firefighter to the oxygen tanks (element 6158), an element so perfect that it is still in use 26 years later. In fact, I want to venture a guess that this set is the set that mask made its debut in.
This was a glaring omission for years among Lego firefighters, and I was glad to see it rectified. I loved everything about this set: the brace for the extremely long ladder, the wheels and tyres which were still very new to the System, and the way the outriggers folded back into the vehicle. Best of all, it’s a tiller truck with a rear steering position! As a kid I always thought those were the coolest things, but somehow never saw one in action until well into college when I saw one change lanes across a highway and man was it trippy the way the vehicle shimmied and walked.
I remember getting this set on a day that my sister and I were visiting my grandparents. My mom took my grandmother out for shopping and some errands, and they came back with this set, with my mom explaining that my grandmother insisted on getting it for me. My grandmother was in her early 80s but had been suffering from severe Alzheimer’s and who knows how many mini-strokes along the way. I never really got to know her before her mind was gone, and I don’t know how much of any of us she recognised or knew, but she did know that her grandson loved Lego and loved fire trucks. Twenty-odd years later, it proudly patrols the streets of Brickadelphia, keeping its plastic citizens, and a link to family long gone, safe.
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16 comments on this article
Nice set, and story.
I had the year 2000 version of this Firetruck, similar, but much more simplified.
6477-1: Fire Fighters' Lift Truck
2000 was also my last year of LEGO until 2016.
Nowadays, I must say I really do appreciate the 80s and 90s Town sets more compared to Town.Jr.
But I also do have the 2019 Downtown Fire truck now.
I keep my old LEGO from before 2001 seperate.
YES! I have this set! Well, most of it...
I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother but at least you have a happy memory to remember her by.
I’ve never seen any of these sets before and it’s quite fascinating for me to watch what I have missed and each person telling their personal story of how they acquired it, or how they loved it.
I’m beginning to see that, if you put your mind to it, you can share whatever might be little details of pieces of plastic and with the world. If only everyone could support each other this much.
Thank you @MrJackson for sharing your story.
I have one, straight from my childhood
Glad you mentioned the oxygen masks. I used those from my first fire station set 6571 quite a lot between my city and space figures
I don't know what's going on here but you guys just nailed my second most memorable lego set back to back. I got the Hook & Ladder set as my second set after the Deep Freeze Defender. Loved this set!! Agreed! on the oxygen mask, outriggers, grey suit with oxygen dial. and the set had enough pieces to moc a standard fire truck, as well as pickup trucks.
I have this set and I remember getting it around Christmas in 1995. Ironically, I still have the box but I lost the manual. Nevertheless, it's a great set and LEGO really should make more of these!
I remember building this one on my grandma’s living room carpet!
I love this story!
An awesome profile of an awesome set - thanks for sharing! Was this the fire truck that was an obstacle on the race track in the original LEGO Island game, despite none of the incarnations of the island ever having a fire station?
There must be something special about Lego sets given to us from grandmothers! In my case, the first Lego set I ever got, the one that started it all, was a premature gift from one of my grandmothers. She's no longer with us, but among all the other memories I treasure of her, that gift of Lego into my life is a big one!
As for Hook and Ladder, I agree with you on this being an awesome fire truck. I always knew that as I glimpsed it in LEGO.com catalogs back in the mid-1990s, but I never got it. And I always wanted the fire station from 1994, Flame Fighters, more. Thankfully, I got both of those sets, plus Central Precinct HQ and Surveillance Squad (again with the cool names!) from eBay two years ago. All were MISB, like they time traveled from 1994 to my apartment in 2018! I'm glad you got to build and play with yours, though. I'm working on establishing my Lego room, so once that space is sorted out, I'll finally bust open those seals to give my own little Lego city the fire services it needs!
Own this and I'm looking at it right now. Classic firefighter set.
I just remembered this set had the best trailer hitch connections. The trailer used an axle with ball joint (2736) to a unique plate (3491). The truck used a standard 2x2 round plate with the axle hole. This set could be driven up and down hills with transitioning gradients and the trailer would never pop out of the hitch and would flex with the slope of the terrain. I was annoyed when they discontinued this style of hitching after 1997 and still today the diesel truck and trailers have pins that just bind up or pop out.
This was the last set I bought before Dark Age, in my favorite toy store, it was family owned and closed only last year.
And all this time, I didn't know about those trucks with rear steering position. I thought the steering wheel was for the ladder. You never stop learning...
Great story! For me, this was the set that brought me out of my Dark Ages. I was recovering from an illness and came across this set in a local shop and brought it home on a whim. Sitting on the floor building it brought back so much nostalgia -- like you, I was fundamentally a City sets kid. Even though I have to admit the four-wide vehicles from this period are kinda ugly, it doesn't matter because the fire engine sparked a new interest in LEGO and led to so many other things.
I have this set, my mom bought me it when I was small kid and all my friends were jealous :D