Random set of the day: Cyber Slam Spider
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 8239 Cyber Slam Spider, released in 1998. It's one of 27 Technic sets produced that year. It contains 120 pieces and 1 minifig.
It's owned by 352 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you might find it for sale at BrickLink or eBay.
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34 comments on this article
Technic was slightly...um...awful back then!
Most spiders I’ve seen don’t have 6 legs, rocket boosters, a giant satellite dish strapped to their back and a missile for a head.
I understand that the objective is to make the other shooter launch so it has no ammunition to hit you, but at this angle, well...
Feels like someone at Lego really wanted to make Tron sets...
Not to be confused with 8233-1 . . .
Im not really the person that likes lego technic tbh
Lore please!
@Monopoly said:
"Most spiders I’ve seen don’t have 6 legs, rocket boosters, a giant satellite dish strapped to their back and a missile for a head."
You obviously haven’t met the spiders in my crawl space. Yeesh.
Awful? Those were great little sets with tons of playability! And the "minifigs" were really nice as well. I can definitely attest to having had great fun with these, and so did my brother, back in the day. We did prefer 8257, but damn was that purple cyborg a neat figurine.
I’m sorry. What?
@Monopoly:
If they exist, I'm sure they're native to Australia, where the array of potentially lethal wildlife is clearly God's way of saying, "Don't live here."
@MCLegoboy:
This reminds me of a book my brother had called, "The Great Brain". At some point in the series, the titular character is hired to teach an immigrant kid how to fight. Within the scope of this series, the way you initiate a fistfight is to place a chip on your shoulder. When the other person knocks it off, you punch them in the face. This is a standard way of doing things, meaning that when you see someone with a chip placed on their shoulder, you know exactly what's going to happen if you respond by knocking the chip off...and yet kids in this story still respond by doing exactly that. No "knock the chip off, and immediately follow it with an uppercut". Knock the chip off, take a fist to the face, and proceed from there.
So yeah, you have to question the logic of shooting a target that's clearly rigged to launch a dart right back in your face. I mean, at that scale, that should be fatal, you'd think. Take a dart the size of your own head right to your face from short range, that should splinter the vertebrae in your neck.
I too am an avid devotee of Competition.
Gotta love that color though. Bright Bluish Green, AKA Dark Turquoise. One of the best LEGO colors out there.
He does realize shooting it’s dish will make it shoot him, right?
I've never seen this set before in my life and I love it
I think this set is composed of the two colors that were slated to be deleted when Mark Stafford had to make that fateful call. Thankfully, Dark Turq has been resurrected and has been widely used for almost five years now.
Unique: None
Rare: 1
32074 2x6 Technic projectile launcher in Purple x1
According to Rebrickable this was the only set packaged with the small black case, the same style that appeared in 3722 (gold).
Nope, this is regular purple, which did get retired shortly after the introduction of dark-purple. The latter is what rightfully beat teal out for the last open slot.
@PurpleDave said:
"Nope, this is regular purple, which did get retired shortly after the introduction of dark-purple. The latter is what rightfully beat teal out for the last open slot."
But they would have had to bring back purple immediately for the Harry Potter Bus. So we’d have ended up with both colors, but instead we got several horrible terrible heartbreaking years without Teal. But what’s done is done, and we have teal back, so it’s all good.
@Cooliocdawg :
You've got the timing wrong. HP3 gave us the Knight Bus in 2004. The critical set was 8115 Dark Panther for Exo-Force, released in 2008. He'd built that model in red, originally, but also built it with alternate color schemes in orange, dark-purple, and teal, before ultimately picking the best color and sealing teal's fate.
And then they stopped producing dark-purple anyways, because of the color inconsistencies on that same Knight Bus. It was only when Toy Story 3 sets were produced in 2010 that we got the best color back, because they needed it for both Buzz and Zurg.
"C'mon and get up,
it's time to SLAM, now.
We're about t'knock these bricks into overtime-
WELCOME TO THE CYBER SLAM!"
What? No one else but me thought a movie about Cyber Slam would be at least as interesting as "Space Jam"? C'mon, it was the 90s, man!
Before the advent of Throwbots, Cyber Slam was what finally got me actively interested in Technic sets. Sure, I'd received several before, but they were mere curiosities in my collection. The rad colors and battle functionality, not to mention the presence of the Technic maxi-figs, made Cyber Slam really pop in my imagination. Of the three sets I saw initially available in 1998, this one, however, was the only one that didn't appeal to me. It didn't dawn on me that the purple "spider" could actually shoot at Nick Stryker (the fellow in teal) with its launcher for a body. So I wrote it off and pined for "Cyber Strikers". I got "Robot's Revenge" for Christmas instead in 1998, and that satisfied me. In college, I would find Cyber Strikers on eBay brand new and for only $25 (why doesn't that happen anymore, I wonder???). I have no additional desire to get this, though.
Technic figures weren’t a bad idea actually. Might be nice to see them again.
@PurpleDave said:
" And then they stopped producing dark-purple anyways, because of the color inconsistencies on that same Knight Bus. It was only when Toy Story 3 sets were produced in 2010 that we got the best color back, because they needed it for both Buzz and Zurg."
Oh, you're right - I don't think I ever realized that. After 2004, it was mostly used for minifigure pieces and barely anything else. It feels like after 2010 they started to realize it's potential: in 2011 it appeared mostly in Ninjago, 2012 brought us Friends (obviously) and since then it has appeared widely in all kinds of themes.
The regular, "old" purple color is something that I still reminisce as it pops out more than dark purple, while still being purple. It was used for two elements in this set, the Technic launchers and the ribbed hoses.
I like those technic figs. Still need to buy me one, just because.
One of the socalled "Technic" sets from the high time of downfall of this theme. I restarted with Technic 10 years before such sets and never considered such slammer sets as technic sets and I am still not doing it. The Technic sets at that time did not have much resemblance to existing vehicles if at all. Maybe some were good for playing as mentioned by others but not good for building experience.
Technic figures were nice.
Competition was a lot of fun, I still remembering battling with a few friends with those boxing robots.
Nice to see the much-missed Technic figure make an appearance
@The_Byzantine_Knight said:
" @Kynareth said:
"Lore please!"
There is no lore to this set. Just the "EXTREME= COOL, even if it makes no sense" mentality of the 90s, and Lego struggling for a new audience until there were saved by the Star Wars theme a year later."
Correction: Bionicle played a bigger role in saving LEGO than Star Wars. And funny enough, Competion was one of the preludes to Bionicle (in terms of experimenting with the Technic system) so...
I don't understand why some people in here dislike this theme, it is so much fun! Great color choices, awesome Technic figures, and super fun to play with functions. In my opinion, LEGO Technic shouldn't be just about realistic vehicles, but also expand upon its building system with stuff like this.
Two sets I own this week!
The only story I have about this one was that it went into the box of assorted LEGO (as opposed to sorted and bagged sets kept in safe storage - this did not happen too to many sets, so most likely I just couldn't be bothered to put this oen together when packing everything up before moving out), kept at my parents' house during my dark ages. This box was brought out whenever any kids visited them. Apparently one of those kids really liked the purple launcher, because it was gone missing when I decided to finally reclaim my blocks and sort this box properly.
A time of lots of small sets under 200 pieces for kids to enjoy. Just not sure that is the most sensible way to ride a motorbike if you still want two working legs when you stop. Apart from the pieces, the Technic bit is the ability to change the angle of the shooter by turning the grey gear.
@PurpleDave said:
" @Cooliocdawg :
You've got the timing wrong. HP3 gave us the Knight Bus in 2004. The critical set was 8115 Dark Panther for Exo-Force, released in 2008. He'd built that model in red, originally, but also built it with alternate color schemes in orange, dark-purple, and teal, before ultimately picking the best color and sealing teal's fate.
And then they stopped producing dark-purple anyways, because of the color inconsistencies on that same Knight Bus. It was only when Toy Story 3 sets were produced in 2010 that we got the best color back, because they needed it for both Buzz and Zurg."
4866: The Knight Bus Was the set I was referring to, so purple would only have been dead for 3 years. Or maybe even just 2. But teal was gone for many more years.
Okay but when these came out I absolutely thought they were rad. I think a cousin had one of these sets, having little technic boxing matches was great fun. Got hopelessly outmatched a few years down the line when I acquired 8549 though...
Glory days of Technic right here. It's a shame it's become the plain models of today, they really had a great balance of models and some crazy experimental sets like this. Would love to see this kind of thing rise again. In the meantime, I should really pick up some Competition sets, those colors are incredible.
I hope he has been working on his legs - if he drops his feet down the back tyre will rip them off!
Ugh, not many late 90's LEGO sets out there that were good....