Random set of the day: Red Monster
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 4592 Red Monster, released in 2002. It's one of 27 Racers sets produced that year. It contains 25 pieces, and its retail price was US$4/£2.99.
It's owned by 795 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you might find it for sale at BrickLink or eBay.
Help me come to life! If you like the set I've chosen for you today, please pledge your support for me on LEGO Ideas so I have a chance of becoming an official LEGO set!
32 likes
24 comments on this article
What was the name of those weird aliens from Racers in about the same era? I sometimes am tempted to pick up one of those sets just to see if they are as bizarre as they look. At least this one looks a bit more recognizable as Lego even if the figure body is weird.
Is it just me or is that thing driving off a cliff. Talk about living life on the edge...
Do you ever get the feeling that, during the early 00s, a lot of Lego employees were told to just grab handfuls of pieces out of the parts bin and whatever they can assemble them into, it's gonna get sold as an official set?
Wicked helmet dude.
I had a few of these and similar. I recognize the printed mudguard, so I had this set. But, they kinda sucked.
First, the front wheels were one-piece plastic, not rubber. The pullback motors had several weak points. On one, the gears stripped, on another, it would no longer hold the wheels securely. But, they did allow you to build quite small pullbacks. The Shell sets came with a new pullback motor, but thanks to Greenpeace's tantrum, we never got them in the USA. I would have actually made a point to buy fuel from a Shell station (nearest at the time was Exxon, then here this year, they rebranded to Shell). I don't know why LEGO would invest in the expensive tooling for a pullback motor, and not use it. I was hoping Speed Champions would have a small-scale offshoot, but so far, that one Lamborghini poly is all we've had.
@cody6268 said:
"I had a few of these and similar. I recognize the printed mudguard, so I had this set. But, they kinda sucked.
First, the front wheels were one-piece plastic, not rubber. The pullback motors had several weak points. On one, the gears stripped, on another, it would no longer hold the wheels securely. But, they did allow you to build quite small pullbacks. The Shell sets came with a new pullback motor, but thanks to Greenpeace's tantrum, we never got them in the USA. I would have actually made a point to buy fuel from a Shell station (nearest at the time was Exxon, then here this year, they rebranded to Shell). I don't know why LEGO would invest in the expensive tooling for a pullback motor, and not use it. I was hoping Speed Champions would have a small-scale offshoot, but so far, that one Lamborghini poly is all we've had. "
There is a McLaren poly for 2021 (30343). unsure of a pullback function though.
@Your_Future_President:
Nope. To be driving off a cliff, the wheels would have to be touching the ground. Here, they're not even in close proximity. When they said they needed packaging art for an "off-road vehicle", the person tasked with the job had clearly just watched one of the first two BttF movies.
@Isabella_and_Lego_Liker:
They haven't used any of those pullback motors since 2014, with the last sets from the Racers theme. Speed Champions has never used any sort of pullback motor that I'm aware of.
Wow, it's the third random set in a week that I've actually owned.
I really liked the printed helmet and the funny face with a huge grin and cool shades.
Pullback motor was fun to mess with... and still works surprisingly well to this day.
Not much Blacktron going on in this set. Give the dude a black helmet, and you got a short, squat, sitting Blacktron 1 fig, though...
I never had this particular Drome Racer, had a couple others. They became quite interesting characters to play with, based on their unique bodies.
@ElephantKnight:
It’s called Red Monster. If anything, this is the birth of M-Tron, with their peculiar insistence that everything they dig out of the ground _doesn’t_ belong to Blacktron.
That driver must’ve only escaped with his head!... and organs.
I actually kind of like those small Drome Racers. They had lots of unique new prints for the helmets, and crazy minifigure face prints that you can have a lot of fun messing around with.
On top of that, the fact that they managed to create a pull-back motor that actually works for such a small scale is quite impressive.
I implore you to check the face printing of this minifigure.
Whoa, one of the ones I had! I ended up parting them out for the cool wheel colors. Not sure if I can put them back together now. These were great! I could race them all on my 4586 Stunt Race Track, or just against one another :)
@xboxtravis7992 said:
"What was the name of those weird aliens from Racers in about the same era? I sometimes am tempted to pick up one of those sets just to see if they are as bizarre as they look. At least this one looks a bit more recognizable as Lego even if the figure body is weird. "
Xalax! I had a few of those, too. https://brickset.com/sets/theme-Racers/subtheme-Xalax
@xboxtravis7992 said:
"What was the name of those weird aliens from Racers in about the same era? I sometimes am tempted to pick up one of those sets just to see if they are as bizarre as they look. At least this one looks a bit more recognizable as Lego even if the figure body is weird. "
They were called Ramas, and Xalax was their home planet, as established in the Lego Racers 2 game; those sets came out in 2001. These ones with the weird partial minifigs came out in 2002 and 2003; at the same time there were larger Racers vehicles with full-size minifigures and still others that were Technic. Then from 2004 to 2011, the only Racers sets with minifigures of any kind were the Ferrari ones (I don't count Speed Racer as being Racers), before minifigs returned for the final Racers wave in 2012.
Not as good of a name, as "Bad", which was RSotD earlier, but still good.
These are not particularly bad sets but not something I would keep built in my collection. I have one of them mini pullback motors. It was hard for me to operate around it make a sensible minifig scale MOC.
@cody6268 said:
"I had a few of these and similar. I recognize the printed mudguard, so I had this set. But, they kinda sucked.
First, the front wheels were one-piece plastic, not rubber. The pullback motors had several weak points. On one, the gears stripped, on another, it would no longer hold the wheels securely. But, they did allow you to build quite small pullbacks. The Shell sets came with a new pullback motor, but thanks to Greenpeace's tantrum, we never got them in the USA. I would have actually made a point to buy fuel from a Shell station (nearest at the time was Exxon, then here this year, they rebranded to Shell). I don't know why LEGO would invest in the expensive tooling for a pullback motor, and not use it. I was hoping Speed Champions would have a small-scale offshoot, but so far, that one Lamborghini poly is all we've had. "
Only a very small amount of these had full plastic wheels. Most of them, including this one, feature full rubber.
It’s orange
@xboxtravis7992 said:
"What was the name of those weird aliens from Racers in about the same era? I sometimes am tempted to pick up one of those sets just to see if they are as bizarre as they look. At least this one looks a bit more recognizable as Lego even if the figure body is weird. "
As others have said, they were the Ramas from the racing-mad planet of Xalax!
I was on a huge Lego Racers 2 kick as a kid, it was my first 'action' Lego video game, so I loved them... though they are very strange as sets, like you say, as they only consist of *four pieces* each. Plus a big piece of plastic that you slap to launch them across the floor, and two rubber bands to make that work. Of the four pieces, some of the noses and engines of the car have been reused in different contexts, albeit without the printing; the bases - complete with wheels already attached and a mechanism that if you his one of the bumpers, it would send the driver flying - have never been seen again; and the drivers are little aliens that aren't even counted as minifigures.
(Personally, I think they should be. Bricklink recently decided that Freeze and Chill (from 4579) were deserving of actual minifigure listings, but the ones from individual sets still aren't. I also think the figures from these Drome sets should be counted, too: they even have minifigure heads, which to me makes them a lot more 'minifigure' than some of the other figures that do get counted!)
On the subject of the Ramas - since, due to their low piece-counts, I think they're excluded from showing up as RSotD - I have a headcanon. There are two distinct different pieces that are used for the alien drivers, one which is round-headed with spines and pointy teeth (as in 4572 Scratch), and the other a square head whose expression is printed (e.g. 4567 Surfer, my first and favourite of the Ramas). While official material gave no in-universe explanation for the two different appearances, I've started to like the idea that, rather than running with the typical assumption that all the racers were boys, I'm wondering if some of them maybe aren't girls, and the head-shape is a genetic difference between the genders. 4573 Lightor is the only one referred to with a male pronoun in the catalogue descriptions, so it's certainly not impossible...
I had some of these, they were pretty cool
ah yes, Drome Racers... p cool storyline, p weird sets to back it up.
Looks more orange than red, but still nice
@phi13:
The final wave of Racers was released in 2014, as Shell promotional sets. There were four Ferrari pullbacks in the Tiny Turbos scale, a matching Shell tanker truck (not a pullback), and two minifig-scale scenes. The year before, there was a single Tiny Turbos polybag, which falls under the Racers theme.