One if the few M-Tron sets I had played with this one so much

@jalc_45 said:
"Cool set. Still cursed 2020 for me. 3 more hours!"

I'm one of the last, 5 hours 40 minutes for me.

This arrived from a Brickset user a couple weeks ago. I haven’t built it yet, but I will soon.

I had zero space sets growing up...Never too late to start buying/building them.

Ah, M-Tron. Now the fifth best "tron", after Blacktron, Blacktron Cadet/Decoy Corps, Unitron...and Tron. I don't think I ever got any of these sets, but I did pick up a couple minifigs in 6704.

Nice, that's the way to end a year! M:Tron! I loved M:Tron--had my whole collection (which was all of them but the two biggest--now one biggest) under a black light. Those fluorescent elements were so cool.

^ Ok, I'll give you Blacktron beats M:Tron, but Unitron, really?

M-Tron brought me back from my dark ages! So it’s near and dear to me. And I would just love some kind of tribute theme (like Space Police III)!!

Wow! 2020 ends with a set that I have, and from one of my favorite Space sub-themes to boot.

And so ends one of the worst years of my lifetime...

And so begins one TBA

My favorite Space theme!

Starting the year on a 'Legoland' branded set has got to be a win!

M-Tron coincided with the start of my dark ages. I saw the factions as getting silly with the rapid expansion after the end of classic space. All these years later, I see the M tron has a unique selling point of Magnets (guess that's what the'M' stands for!), and I think that's pretty neat!

That’s a grand name...

M-Tron is a good way to start the year.

Yes, now we're talking.

30 Years later, trans-neon-green is still a color prominently used in LEGO sets.

Fancy name name for what is clearly the M-Tron equivalent of a pick up truck

I loved this set. I liked the steering and the fact that the crane arm was held in place with more magnets.
@lytly said:
"M-Tron brought me back from my dark ages! So it’s near and dear to me. And I would just love some kind of tribute theme (like Space Police III)!!"

Or at least a CMF homage. C'mon Lego...

And the box decal is printed, not stickered. Beautiful.

Huwbot starting strong in the new year! It’s not Futuron :D but still it’s one of classic space themes :)

Unpopular opinion: if this set were released today, it would get laughed outta town. Even for the era, it's just... not very good.

(NB. I was nine in 1990, so very much the target audience, but many of these classic space sets didn't hold much appeal outside of the fantastic minifigs, from classic-classic to Futuron to Blacktron. I really liked building enclosed spaceships & bases; sets like the above always seemed a bit 'bitty'.)

I love the neon glow parts and printed tiles, I just wondered how the spaceman steers this vehicle and why the radar dish is not pointing upwards? Did anyone ever built 6862: Secret Space Voyager by combining this set with 6877 and 6923?

The control panel is so nicely mounted at an angle to face the driver! One can speculate there are four buttons for steering (leaving just the crane lowering/raising controls missing).

@ElephantKnight said:
"Those nerdy magnet loving scientist miners. The Blacktron Empire has declared the M-tron to be easy pickings. But watch out for their magnets."

Ironically, M-Tron had one of the most militaristic-looking space sets ever with 6923. That thing is basically an attack helicopter!

Back to 6896, this set is essentially a space tow truck (and was advertised as such in certain commercials). It's a shame it didn't also include a small vehicle for it to rescue or one of the big equipment crates found in the larger M-Tron sets.

@ambr said:
"I love the neon glow parts and printed tiles, I just wondered how the spaceman steers this vehicle and why the radar dish is not pointing upwards? Did anyone ever built 6862: Secret Space Voyager by combining this set with 6877 and 6923? "

I had all those sets (and still do, assembled in the closet) but never got the secret instructions. I don't think I even knew about the secret ship when I was a kid.

I think Blacktron II has a similar secret ship too, IIRC.

@ra226 :
Sure. The Blacktron Cadet/Decoy Corps had something cool to aspire to once they outgrew wearing a giant letter on their chests, but M-Tron didn’t have anything better in front of them. M-Tron couldn’t even afford a base. Unitron had a base _and_ monorail. Speaking of which, a single “u” is the only thing keeping M-Tron from getting bumped to sixth place.

@bigmanjones :

They may have had a catchy gimmick to start off, but the problem with such things is band wagoners. Five other Space factions figured out that anyone and their brother can afford magnets. Plus they had their own gimmicks on top of magnets.

@Brickalili said:
"Fancy name name for what is clearly the M-Tron equivalent of a pick up truck "

In Britain, this set was named 'Astro-wrecker'. 6923 was named 'Cosmicopter'!

@bdc101 said:
"One of my favorite sets from my favorite theme. This is one of the sets which I never lost the instructions for, so I built it many times over many years.

Back in the 90s if you lost the instructions, you could never rebuild a set again, which is what happened with most of my Mtron and Blacktron II sets. Those are 80s/90s kid problems though. "

I have only a few sets in my childhood. I have remembered all instructions =)

@VIPerMX:
Even the one set I can say for certain that I memorized how to build (about midway through building six copies of 8557, I stopped taking the instructions out of the box), I’ve long forgotten how to build. I could probably manage an original Bohrok just fine, because it will be very clear if you screwed up when you try to roll it into a sphere. I _might_ be able to build all six Bohrok Kal entirely from memory, provided I don’t mix up the protodermis hand-shields.

Heck, I can’t even build my own stuff from memory (which is fine because most of it is saved as LDraw files, since that’s how most of them were designed). To be fair, my latest build is a 6-wide 60’s Ford truck that was built for the Good Humor ice cream company, and it clocks in at just over 300pcs. The interior build is so complex I can’t even remember what it looks like, and I just finished building the physical copy a few months ago.

@ambr said:
"I love the neon glow parts and printed tiles, I just wondered how the spaceman steers this vehicle and why the radar dish is not pointing upwards? Did anyone ever built 6862: Secret Space Voyager by combining this set with 6877 and 6923? "
I did. In fact, if memory serves, being able to build that was part of the reason I got this set and 6923. (I already had 6877.)

Long life for M-tron!!

1621 Lunar MPV and 6896 Celestial Forager were my first two 'wheel based' Lego sets I ever got - and both of them had nifty steering mechanisms.

So you can imagine my disappointment when I started collecting other rolling Lego and realised how rare this was! XD