Featured set of the day: Indy Transport
Posted by Huw,
Bumblepants has selected today's featured set:
While Castle and Space were my first loves in the Lego world as a kid, when 6335 Indy Transport came out I was awestruck. 3 incredible race cars? A massive truck that they all fit on? Green Lego bricks that were not baseplates or trees?!
The truck had so many cool details like the chrome exhaust pipes and the 5 wide section at the rear of the cab. Never mind that it fell off easily as it was only secured by a few jumper plates, it was quite the innovative technique in my mind.
The trailer was also fantastic with the ability to fold up and down and load all the cars as well as keep a full selection of tools.
Did I mention green bricks? Looking at the photo it doesn't seem like all that many but for that era and my Lego collection at the time it was game changing. I was recently 'back in my daying' to my kids about how lucky they are in the current world of Lego with their Bright Green, Green, Dark Green, Sand Green, Lime Green, Spring Green, Olive Green etc. Of course, they just rolled their eyes but it really is amazing how far Lego has come with colour choice.
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(Image from The Plastic Brick)
Perhaps the only weak point were the giant Octan stickers that covered a ton of pieces on the tool access panels. Looks great but a dreadful mess as anyone who experienced STAMPS* knows.
Indy Transport was easily one of my most played-with sets as a kid. I can still remember spending hours building elaborate race courses with road plates, a ramp and pit crater plate, and as many sloped bricks as I could make ramps out of. If your racecars weren't flying off ramps at any chance possible why even race right?
I also remember trying to mimic the car builds with my other parts to make more but without the numbers and racing slicks they always came up short. I probably tried to save up pocket money for the larger race set 6337 Fast Track Finish to go with it but saving pocket money was never a strength of mine...
*Stickers across multiple parts
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Nice set! BTW, STAMP = STicker(s) Across Multiple Parts (not "over").
This is a great one! I loved the minimalist studs appearance of the race cars and the slick tires were so cool to me back then. Unfortunately, I have nothing from this edition of Race. After Christmas 1995, I was solidly in the "fantasy" theme state of mind, and I didn't really get back into Town after the release of the Lego Island PC game in 1997, in which the cars and racetrack that you never saved up to get featured prominently. Of course, by that point, Indy Transport and the racetrack had reached their EOL and the ugly juniorized era of Town had started settling in.
Yes, green was such a rarity back then! That's got to be a major factor as to why I loved any Octan-branded set; there was always some green guaranteed!* If only 7 year-old me could see all the varieties of green bricks that I have now...sheesh!
*Not necessarily green bricks, unfortunately. A small formula 1 car from 1993 features a driver with the Octan logo on his chest, but the car is devoid of actual green pieces.
Getting real Lego Island vibes from those cars.
Awesome set! My brother and I shared this set. Many awesome races. I remember how awesome we thought the slick tires were as all Lego race cars before this year had the old treaded style. Thanks for the review!
Great article.
I wasn't into Town at the time either. It was Castle and Pirate for me. But now, this is one of my must haves.
Thanks for sharing.
This set, along with 6337 Fast Track Finish prompted me out of my "dark age". I still remember exactly where they were located on the shelves of the Lego Imagination Center at Mall of America. Not long after these purchases, I started working there part-time and entered the world of "negative paychecks" LOL. This post made my day; thank you!
Ooh! Those red 1x16 lattice parts! Some terrific alt builds shown on the box too!
Oh 96, the final push of greatness in design before it all went stir crazy for a good decade or so...
There's just something about that Octan branding that I love! My Parisian Restaurant was even bought by Octan. Not sure what they're up to but...I'm sure it's fine...
Indy transport? But Doctor Jones isn't in this set at all!
Oh boy it's the Lego Island race cars, for years I didn't know a lot of the vehicles in Lego island were official sets.
Nice write-up, @Bumblepants ! This set looks to me like it was a kind of light before dusk... Wait, that doesn't sound right. The dawn before darkness? My brain hurts...
@Kamiccolo said:
"Oh boy it's the Lego Island race cars, for years I didn't know a lot of the vehicles in Lego island were official sets."
Took me a while too to realize that they did something similar in Lego City Undercover.
I have this one too but I still need to find replacement stickers... :(
I am lucky to have this set from my uncle. He had this set as a kid, and now I have all of his legos that he owned.
I remember the novelty of those green parts! I think I got this in the early 2000s; it was a very appealing set with great details and playability.
Excellent choice! I love this set.
This is definitely one of those sets I regret not picking up at the time.
I actually found race car number 4 (it was the one that was sold independantly) in a Toys R Us, about five or six years after this line of racing cars was released. Yes, of course I bought it, it was like fate or something.
This really was a great set I'd forgotten I had growing up! I haven't seen those long red lattice pieces on anything in a long time... I wonder if they are still used. That's a cool part.
I had this as a kid and had it now as well! Had? Yea, super random, I just sold it 20 min ago...logged on here to update my sets and bam.
One of the best sets! Loved this as a kid. l collected all the different numbered indy cars.
What an awesome set! Loved it as a kid.
Bumblepants is really not kidding about the Green racer being a fresh idea. At the time, Green was decidedly for baseplates and plants, similar to how Dark Grey and Brown started off mostly as plants/mountains and weapons. At best, Green was used as the tertiary color in the Octan color scheme. It might be easy to consider this part of Lego's oft-cited uneasiness with military-adjacent colors, but that philosophy seems to have had at least partially subsided by this point in their history. After all, there were plenty of Light Grey elements used in Castle and Space throughout the 80s and early 90s. By the mid-90s, I think their intent had changed into keeping a simple color palette that was based around just three bright primary colors and three greyscale colors, especially for Town. Secondary solid colors arrived much slower. Green was a necessity and came first. The various Orange and Purple shades came years later, and thus got muddied in the turn-of-the-millennium color variety madness.
When I was a kid, I only had Fast Track Finish, but was keenly aware of the Indy Transport (Slick Racer, less so). I've revisited these old Indy car sets in recent years, and because they are made of only a few cheap parts, recreating them is very easy. Except for a missing piece or two, I now have the full roster of all six cars, decades after the fact. Maybe I'll include the transport itself one day, too.
Ah the times North Korea (5), Myanmar (6) and Lithuania/Costa Rica (2) all shared a single race transporter and Myanmar's team driver was moonlighting as the transporter truck driver. Complicated but educating backstories... A beautiful set with premium playability just before the Y2K hit and when suddenly there were no more desirable sets made for years.
This is one good looking set. Always loved it, but never got it...
One of the golden ages of LEGO, with only a couple of unique faces, like the one with the eyebrow, with sunglasses, and with the waiter mustache.
I distinctly remember buying this set (I was 11 years old) in April of 1996 from my saved pocket money for 50 Dutch guilders, which was a lot of money at that time.
I took it home, assembled it and never took it apart. After all those 24 years it is now on display in a small glass display case in my old room at my parents house. It is the only set to be left in one piece like that. Sure, some pieces (like the two small windows in the truck) were borrowed for MOC's at times, but they were always put back shortly after.
I had years of fun with this. The best feature were the two red lattice pieces: if you left the hinged back of the vehicle all the way up and attached the lattice pieces to the top part, you could still drive the racing cars off the trailer without hitting anything. Good times...
I miss Octan. (
I have Slick Racer, and this one and Fast Track Finish are on my wishlist for creating a racing scene. We're seeing the beginnings of the eventual Town Jr. design stylings starting to creep in with this year's sets but this one still requires building more than 5 pieces to complete the set, and it looks pretty good on the shelf.
I remember them from lego island too. I had trouble with that race because of the giant skeleton
I remember pestering my dad to tell Santa Claus to get me this. I had a couple of random sets, but no race cars and this one looked amazing back then. Good times.
PS. Santa never gave me the set lol
Oh, well. I got this set as a present for Easter in 1996 and loved it.
I got this for birthday right after it's release. It was an ingenious set back in the day and I still like lot of it's aspects today.
The STAMPs on mine still hold pretty well despite being disassembled multiple times and even kept parted out for some years :)
This is definitely one of the greatest sets ever released by LEGO.
At the time, I was of the opinion that it was a great toy, whether it was LEGO or not, and Mattel could have released something like this in die-cast and made a lot of money.