Random set of the day: Monster Launcher
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 8908 Monster Launcher, released during 2009. It's one of 18 Power Miners sets produced that year. It contains 13 pieces and 1 minifig.
It's owned by 521 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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33 comments on this article
I wish I had been old enough to buy LEGO back when Power Miners was a thing.
For when you have a desperate need to launch your monsters.
Monster Launcher! Monster Launcher!
You can launch all day! And launch all night!
Monster Launcher! Monster Launcher!
More fun than a pillow fight!
I'm sorry if I just got that commercial stuck in your head after so many years, it's just what I thought of.
At least it not as bad as Zoo Pals... >:}
@brickengineeringdude:
I was old enough, and have a full set of rock monsters plus matching crystals (except trans-yellow because they made that one settle for TNG). I have never heard of this set.
When you're a Power Miner and you select Same Day Delivery.
The nostalgia... Power Miners was my first introduction to Lego. Me and my friend just playing with all the rock monsters, eating grilled cheese after school. Good times, good times...
Insert John Williams' Superman Theme here.
I just wish I had some rock monsters to steal arms from for minifigs!
The best coloured rock monster, here. Too bad it's dark bluish grey, rather than black.
@RaiderOfTheLostBrick:
Against a flying kryptonite monster armed with a large chunk of kryptonite? He doesn’t stand a chance...
This comes with Sulfurix, which was the monster that according to a Lego.com quiz I was most like. I was proud of my older quiz result when 8962 was released, revealing the Sulfurix variety of rock monster was the ruling class, the only one appearing at all 3 scales. Meltrox was available in 2 scales so seems like it was the 2nd highest caste of rock monster.
Anyway, this Sulfurix minifigure is actually rarer than it seems out to be. Despite nominally appearing in 5 sets, the only reliable way to obtain Sulfurix was through 8959 Claw Digger. All other Sulfurix "sets" were rare promotional polybags like this one. The other 3 polybags are even more obscure polybags released in 3 European countries with different set numbers but probably the same content.
We'll keep the lore simple today.
Deep underground, a gigantic Lava Monster known as Eruptorr has been causing massive tremors. In an attempt to research these earthquakes, a team of brave Power Miners are sent into the depths.
Once underground the Power Miners find a cave system full of strange Rock Monsters feeding on powerful Energy Crystals. The PMs attempt to take the ECs from the RMs, as they believe it's what's causing the quakes.
Eventually the Power Miners tracked down the true cause to Eruptorr and extinguished/captured him (I think it was the later) and could leave the Rock Monsters in peace.
Here we got a Sulfurix, the yellow Rock Monster. I can't remember it's powers so I'll have to look it up... they were the most cunning of the Rock Monsters, and were able to melt through rock to quickly tunnel to new chambers.
@Harmonious_Building said:
"When you're a Power Miner and you select Same Day Delivery."
In the olden days, this is what we called Air Mail.
@brickengineeringdude said:
"I wish I had been old enough to buy LEGO back when Power Miners was a thing."
Foolishly, I sometimes forget that posters here at Brickset and other online LEGO communities aren’t like me and vary in all sorts of ways - in your case, being a very different age! I was way old enough to buy Power Miners when it came out and have Meltrox and Eruptorr in my display collection ( https://brickset.com/minifigs/pm029/eruptorr-(rock-monster) )
@ElephantKnight:
Combustix beats all.
@Norikins:
That’s one way to look at it. You’re forgetting Firax/Eruptorr, who arguably look more menacing than Meltrox/Tremorox, though. And that ignores the possibility that there are five stages, not just three. Maybe Meltrox, Infernox, and Tremorox are the first three stages, while Firox, Firax, and Eruptorr are stages one, two, and four.
@GSR_MataNui:
Combustix is the only yellow one. Sulfurix is trans neon green.
And if Eruptorr was the one causing all of the problems, how do Combustix/Firax/Infernox factor in? All the first wave monsters have dark-bley color schemes, but these three share Eruptorr’s black color scheme, as well as coming out at the same time.
I’m sorry, I can’t even tell what I’m looking at in that image. We need a new one without the glare and crinkles of the polybag. From the name and the part of the image I can see, there appears to be a small catapult thingy, but I had to look at the minifigs entry on the set page to find out what it was launching (although I was guessing it might be a monster).
Can somebody please provide Brickset with a clearer image for this set? It deserves better.
I find it hard to believe the monster would have willingly stepped on that launcher. Was the crystal the bait? If so that could explain how both are flying together with the crystal being up ahead. I should build this with my spare parts and find out just how far it all goes...for science!
From what I can see, using catapults to catapult themselves seems to be a regular thing in the culture of the Rock Monsters, as one of those launchers also appears in the set 8961 Crystal Sweeper.
This little yellow sucker and Pirates (2009) theme got me out of my Dark age.
@LegoDavid said:
"From what I can see, using catapults to catapult themselves seems to be a regular thing in the culture of the Rock Monsters, as one of those launchers also appears in the set 8961 Crystal Sweeper. "
I mean, when you're a tiny creature with only melee options trying to attack people with massive industrial equipment, launching yourself at them faster than your little legs can scuttle seems a sensible option
@GSR_MataNui said:
"Here we got a Sulfurix, the yellow Rock Monster. I can't remember it's powers so I'll have to look it up... they were the most cunning of the Rock Monsters, and were able to melt through rock to quickly tunnel to new chambers. "
That sounds like a Star Trek Horta to me. If only LEGO had also made zamor spheres in metallic copper, to represent its children.
@brickengineeringdude said:
"I wish I had been old enough to buy LEGO back when Power Miners was a thing."
I missed it completely as I was almost 40 years into my Dark Age!
Anyone remember the Rock Rocket game?
@MusiMus said:
"Anyone remember the Rock Rocket game?"
Oh yeah, I certainly do! I played a tone of the LEGO Flash Games back in the day, and the Rock Rocket was one of my favorites!
I'll be completely honest, I feel like the LEGO Flash Games of the 2000's are still leagues better and more fun to play than most of the LEGO App games we get today.
Somehow I can't imagine this launcher working very well with the classic Rock Monster from 4950...
Tangentially related, but I figured out a while ago how Power Miners and Rock Raiders, its predecessor, could be connected. In Rock Raiders, the action all takes place on a far-away planet in another galaxy: the LMS Explorer, the Rock Raiders' ship that never got an official set, was sucked into a wormhole which left them stranded above an unknown planet, and their only way to get home was to harvest enough energy crystals from the planet's depths to restore power to the ship's hyperdrive. How, then, did the successor series, Power Miners, have similar (but smaller and more colourful) monsters on earth, when they had been a phenomena unique to Planet U in the original?
And then I remembered: at least one Rock Raiders book - https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?B=PuzRock - ended with one of the rock monsters discovered aboard the ship during the Rock Raiders' return journey. It's not inconceivable that said monster escaped once they returned to earth, burrowed its way underground, and started multiplying. Story material suggests that rock monsters reproduce asexually - when a rock monster is killed, it splits apart into multiple (usually about five) mini rock monsters, presumably their equivalent of offspring - and their different appearance by the time of Power Miners could be due to adapting to an entirely different world, or mutations bought about by the change of environment. The colour variations, in particular, could be due to earth energy crystals being different in nature to Planet U energy crystals - the monsters' primary diet - and reacting with their digestive systems in a way that causes them to glow the colour of the crystals they eat most often, potentially explaining the varying colours seen in the more recent theme.
In any case... I know nothing in canon will back me up on this, but it's my personal pet theory and I'm running with it xD
@LegoDavid said:
" @MusiMus said:
"Anyone remember the Rock Rocket game?"
Oh yeah, I certainly do! I played a tone of the LEGO Flash Games back in the day, and the Rock Rocket was one of my favorites!
I'll be completely honest, I feel like the LEGO Flash Games of the 2000's are still leagues better and more fun to play than most of the LEGO App games we get today. "
Agreed. There’s a reason I keep going back to playing Nightfall Incident
Lego power miners one of my fav themes :)
Almost got all of them very lucky to live through 2009 when they were around :D
@Slithus_Venom said:
"I just wish I had some rock monsters to steal arms from for minifigs!"
I just realized how great Korg would look with those arms!
@darkstonegrey said:
" @GSR_MataNui said:
"Here we got a Sulfurix, the yellow Rock Monster. I can't remember it's powers so I'll have to look it up... they were the most cunning of the Rock Monsters, and were able to melt through rock to quickly tunnel to new chambers. "
That sounds like a Star Trek Horta to me. If only LEGO had also made zamor spheres in metallic copper, to represent its children."
“I’m a LEGO designer not a bricklayer Jim!”
@LegoDavid said:
" @MusiMus said:
"Anyone remember the Rock Rocket game?"
Oh yeah, I certainly do! I played a tone of the LEGO Flash Games back in the day, and the Rock Rocket was one of my favorites!
I'll be completely honest, I feel like the LEGO Flash Games of the 2000's are still leagues better and more fun to play than most of the LEGO App games we get today. "
Crystalien Conflict and Junkbot are the top dogs in my eyes. And all of the games leading up to Universe, there was even a Duplo matching crane game that was stellar. Quest for R2-D2??? Man I need to see if someone's recreated some of these
This set and the complementing polybag set 8907 , Rock Hacker, were two of the last sets of any size that I saw steeply discounted at Target (more than 50%). Alas, they had only one of these left by the time I found them clearanced at 90% off (!), but they had a few of the other, and IIRC I got one of this and three of the other (bringing my total of that one to four) for 29 cents each. Tiny sets, but still one of my best-ever LEGO deals I’ve ever gotten.
As for the set… it’s a fairly typical LEGO polybag set, with a figure and a very simple catapult feature. The nice thing about it to me is that it doesn’t just come with a figure, but that the figure is one of those theme-specific, specially molded ones obtainable only in one theme for the relatively brief window the theme is active, presumably never to return, yet it was still available in an inexpensive polybag.
I liked the PM theme and collected several of the sets, though nowhere close to all of them. I still have yet to build most of them, though. One day I’ll sit down and have a big Power Miners build-a-thon of all the sets I have that I haven’t opened yet.
I have a few hundred of these rock monsters. The trans red and trans yellow. Still factory sealed
Brickset is the reason I have this set—I loved the Power Miners theme when I was a kid and wanted to collect all the sets. I wouldn't have known about this one (and 8907) without the database!