I wonder if this was a winter wave or summer wave release back in 1996. I have a LEGO Shop @ Home catalog from 1996 with this set in it, but there is a prominent "NOT AVAILABLE" printed in black over the image of the set. By next year, the catalogs show it just fine. Always wondered what the story was there.

@PurpleDave:
Actually...it's even 'funnier' then that: Black Vulcan ISN'T Black Vulcan...he's Black Lightning...
See: Black Lightning was created in 1977 by Tony Isabella for DC Comics. Said character became somewhat popular, to the point that Hanna-Barbara wanted to add the character to 'Super Friends'...but Tony said "No", so DC's and H-B's idea for a compromise/'workaround', was to 'reskin' the character, without literally re-skinning the character. Funny also how: Lego has both Black Lightning (at his 'live'/tv version) and Black Vulcan (thanks TLBM) figures...
Also worth note: Isabella got his break at Marvel...writing characters like Luke Cage and Black Goliath...irony, gotta' love it:)

Ooh, so close to having the random part of the day included in the random set of the day! I'm sure there is a way to calculate percentage chance of this occurring but I'll leave the number crunching to Huwbot, who knows which sets and parts have already been removed from the pool.

@brick_r:
I had not heard that before. I do know that such things happened _all_the_time_ back the. Comic writers and artists would jump ship, but the characters they created were treated as “work for hire”, so they were owned by the publisher and couldn’t be taken with them. So they’d create a “new” character that was basically the same thing and write that for their next employer. Or they just ripped each other off. I know that Kirby’s Fourth World borrowed elements from material he created for Marvel before his falling out with Stan Lee. Marvel’s Sandman is a rip-off of DC’s Clayface. Fawcett got successfully sued to stop publishing Captain Marvel stories because the Big Red Cheese was a knock-off of Superman (and worse, he was more popular at the time), though DC eventually bought the character and revived him (though not before Marvel stoke the Captain Marvel name). And one of the weirdest was Watchmen, which was originally going to feature the likes of Batman and Superman until DC told Moore he couldn’t play with the nice toys. They let him have the Charleston characters (who they’d also purchased)...and then told him he couldn’t use those either. So he cloned the Charleston characters (some of whom were loosely based on DC characters to begin with), with Blue Beetle becoming Nightowl, Captain Atom becoming Dr Manhattan, and the Question becoming Rorschach, amongst other obvious parallels. And of course now Watchmen has joined Charleston as part of mainstream DC continuity, so you might have three versions of the same character bump into each other.

When I look at these sets, I see Technic build. B model looks as good as the A model.

Ah, the Black Falcon. Word is that he is assembled with all the left-over spare parts from Black Falcon Castle sets. The two designers are Bla Ckf and Al Con and still design secretively sets in the Lego basement for us

Weird, this was before my first dark ages yet I can't remember this set at all.
Especially weird as I was totally into Technic back then and this appears to be an awesome set. How could this have passed me by so completely?
Perhaps it was simply overshadowed by the even more awesome 8480 Space Shuttle that year.

Got this as a teen from my uncle, good amount of functions and a nice B-model actually.

Ah. Is this from that awkward era when Technic B models had their own stickers which weren't on the main model? Those slopes on the nose of the A model appear to be enstickered on the boat.

Notably today's RSotD contains today's RPotD!

@MisterBrickster said:
"Ah. Is this from that awkward era when Technic B models had their own stickers which weren't on the main model? Those slopes on the nose of the A model appear to be enstickered on the boat."

Oh, it was so awkward! In this particular case may be not very much, but I own 8485 and, if I can recall right, the dinosaur's eyes look extremely weird on one of the 2 other models, because there was no way to make the eyes invisible.

@MisterBrickster said:
"Ah. Is this from that awkward era when Technic B models had their own stickers which weren't on the main model? Those slopes on the nose of the A model appear to be enstickered on the boat."

The nose stickers on the B model are on the wing tips on the plane! This was my first proper technic set, I think - or maybe 8235 was. Fantastic sets both!

I own one of these, great set.

Gears, levers, tons of functions, b model, you can add a motor if you want and not an app in sight!

Apart from the rotating propellers there was an undercarriage and moveable flaps. Just the back looks a bit skeleton like and not sure why they couldn't cover the wings with panels to give more lift.

@Brickalili:
Well, they’re not properly trained and licensed pilots, so yeah, they’d probably crash on takeoff, and/or “Indiana Jones” the rest of their team with the propellers, so it would definitely shorten the siege. Short and sweet, at least for the defenders.

8880 vibes. Dig it

@MisterBrickster said:
"Ah. Is this from that awkward era when Technic B models had their own stickers which weren't on the main model?"

It's not just restricted to that era. Two Volvo sets have had different stickers for the B-model. Thankfully it was phased out with the next two sets (42114 doesn't even have a B-model).

@ThatBionicleGuy said:
"This looks NICE. There's something about this more classic style, including the exposed workings, that makes me just especially appreciative of Technic sets of this era."
That's what I always say as well.

Then again, I have come to realize how old I am. Hard to admit, but there is a whole generation even of AFOLs nowadays that have grown up with the modern style of Technic. For them it must be as hard to understand why we who where kids in the Eighties and Nineties love this old style so much as it is for us to understand their love for the covered up style of today's Technic sets.

Guess it comes down to both nostalgia as well as to what you are used to.

one of the best technic sets

@AustinPowers:
I grew up in the late 70’s and 80’s, and I see this era of Technic as primarily being useful for merging modern Technic with System builds. Look at the new beams with alternating perpendicular holes and tell me old-Technic has any equivalence to the potential uses there. It’s like the difference between 2D and 3D art.

@PurpleDave: you're quite right, from a practical standpoint modern Technic parts are much more versatile.
It's just the old style that appeals to me more. Meaning open, so that you can see the mechanisms, and built with Technic bricks and standard system plates/pieces instead of beams and panels.
For my liking 8480 and 8880 were perfect Technic sets from that era. If I had to name the best Technic set of the modern era, it would be 8043 hands down.

Wait. Technic sets gave/give alternate models their own stickers?

I see how that is a potential problem in building/rebuilding models, but I am in love with this idea (but then, I see stickers as accents and extras, not crucial parts--and I tend not to build and rebuild alternate model sets... so it might just be me.).

@AustinPowers said:
"Then again, I have come to realize how old I am. Hard to admit, but there is a whole generation even of AFOLs nowadays that have grown up with the modern style of Technic. For them it must be as hard to understand why we who where kids in the Eighties and Nineties love this old style so much as it is for us to understand their love for the covered up style of today's Technic sets."
Could be worse... my 1st Technic set was 802-1 .... before Technic had even been thought of!

@Lego_Lord_Mayorca said:
"I wonder if this was a winter wave or summer wave release back in 1996. I have a LEGO Shop @ Home catalog from 1996 with this set in it, but there is a prominent "NOT AVAILABLE" printed in black over the image of the set. By next year, the catalogs show it just fine. Always wondered what the story was there."

Unfortunately I can not find any source for a North American release date, but the EU catalogues all give August 1996 as release date. If the planned NA release was the same, that would make it a summer wave...

However whilst looking for that, I found out, that a lot of Technic sets were often delayed by a year in the US. I know that there were some quite noticable difference in System as well (Futuron and Blacktron for example) but these seemed to be caused by either region exclusive sets or the fact some sets contained electronics. Also almost all System incidents seemed to happen in the '80ies, whilst the Technic delay was a mid-'90ies thing.

Why this was pseudo-cancelled in Shop at Home is quite interesting, however I could not find any clue yet. The inventory seems rather innocent to me. Maybe there was a structural weakness in the build so a revised version needed to be made?

(On a side note: Like many sets of the era, the sticker sheet is even older, with a copyright mark of 1994)