Random set of the day: Sonic Cycle

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Sonic Cycle

Sonic Cycle

©1999 LEGO Group

Today's random set is 8251 Sonic Cycle, released in 1999. It's one of 33 Technic sets produced that year. It contains 89 pieces, and its retail price was US$8.

It's owned by 1067 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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22 comments on this article

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By in United States,

Ghost bike! Run for your lives!

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By in United States,

Those handlebars look a bit inadequate

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By in United States,

Sega announces new title --> pre-release hype --> post-release disappointment --> Sega announces new title

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By in United Kingdom,

Does 'Sonic' mean 'no proper handlebars'? Otherwise there's two things on this set that confuse me.

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By in Canada,

Black? Check

Yellow? Check.

No other strange colours? Check.

Ladies and gentlemen, we got ourselves a Blacktron bike here.

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By in United States,

This doesn't look like it was designed with hedgehogs in mind.

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By in United States,

Great thing about little Technic sets like this is they can take a lot of abuse and stay together. This is the kind of fun little motorcycle you can play rough with.

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By in Germany,

I guess this was the missing 4th (yellow) set to 1999's 'modular' Technic series of 8252, 8253 and 8255...
It even fits the number range^^

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By in United States,

a slizer could probably ride this... they released the same year as this too.

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By in United States,

Oh no, he's gotten all the chaos emeralds!

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By in United States,

Does it run on sound? I don’t get it.

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By in United States,

I have the mini version! 2544

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By in Netherlands,

This is one of the technic sets that I own.

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By in United Kingdom,

I mean every cycle makes noise so really aren’t they all sonic?

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By in Latvia,

So I'm guessing suspension works on this one.

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By in United States,

Baffling or unclear names is a special LEGO genre. I think as a kid (and I was 12 when this dropped, so I vaguely remember it... neither then nor now can I claim to be a Technic person, truly) I would have just interpreted "sonic" as "cool-sounding word." So... "cool bike."

But taken a bit more literally, perhaps it means that this bike finds its way places by emitting a high-pitched sound and listening for the echo? No, that's sonar, not sonic...

Perhaps it is like the motorcycles that go down my street at ungodly hours making massively loud noises as though there is something stuck in the engine that it is attempting to kick out. That would be a soundwave, anyway.

The model itself is very "turn of the Millennium Technic," by which I mean that it's... kind of forgetable. At some point in the 2000s, after Bionicle had changed the landscape, Technic sets acquired a tendency to appear smooth (and often massive), but my memory associates the Technic sets of my later active childhood years (say 1998-2002, excluding the spin-offs like Cyberslam and Robo Riders) with smaller vehicles, all sort of interchangeable: not quite a smooth as the later sets, lacking the blockiness of the 1980s, and--crucially to me--without Technic figs.

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By in Germany,

Ah, the year that also gave us 8448
No wonder I can't remember this bike.

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By in United States,

@Jack_Sassy:
Looks like it.

@Formendacil:
Technic, like Trains, always had a problem in that there really wasn’t a way to do impulse-priced starter sets, like you’d see for almost any non-Train minifig set. At some point, they started trying to make more impulse-styled sets, but due to the nature of Technic, they turned out more like tiny K’Nex sets. They were too small to incorporate any complex mechanical functions like you’d expect from the Technic theme, but the parts were too clunky at that scale to look good as static models either. Basically, they were most useful if they included that one part you needed right now, and you didn’t want to wait for a Bricklink order to arrive.

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By in Netherlands,

@Astrobricks said:
"Does it run on sound? I don’t get it."

It may be subsonic, transonic, supersonic or even hypersonic. Only the designers know...

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By in United Kingdom,

Missed this one out as came the year after the really cool 8417, but ok for a younger age group starter set.

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