Random part of the day: Mountain Element
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random part is 53588, 'Mountain Element', which is a System part, category Building Plates. It was introduced in 2006 and was last used in 2008. It was made in 1 colour and has appeared in 5 sets, one of the first of which was 8894 Piraka Stronghold.
Our members collectively own a total of 8,274 of them. If you'd like to buy some you should find them for sale at BrickLink.
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This looked a bit like a raised baseplate, until I saw the scale.
This looks more like a molehill, which they made a mountain out of.
I think it is weird that it has those steps on one side but no studs on them. I much rather prefer something brick built.
Lava Chamber Gate gave me two of that thing!
It was complicated to use it on other builds though...
Lore?
@HandPositions said:
"This looked a bit like a raised baseplate, until I saw the scale."
Its 16x16 and is actually categorized as a raised baseplate.
I own 2 of these and have no clue what to do with them.
All this time I thought it was a City part (I do have the Coast Guard set in which this appears) and here it is listed in a bunch of Bionicle playsets. I like the marbling of the different colours in this part which this rendered picture doesn’t show, and in comparing the 2 or 3 I have the marbling appears to me to be identical. That is some accurate moulding process!
I guess they only made one kind, there is no No. 1 or anything in the part name. Planned obsolescence?
Bonk! It's a Bonk Day! Hurray for Bonkles, even the System ones.
I got this piece from the city coast guard set.
I want to try and MOC with one. Maybe put a little Blacktron base on top. Sounds perfect. now I REALLY want one.
@MeisterDad:
It’s not accurate so much as it is predictable. The best example I know of is the Poisoned Hau Nuva. It’s dual-molded in a marbled red/green color scheme. Because it was a limited run, they only made one 4-cavity mold for these, so it’s easy to collect a full set of the different patterns. You can match each of the basic patterns to one specific cavity, since they all have those numbers molded into them. Two of the patterns look very similar, to the point that even after explaining the difference, I was unable to convince a lot of people that the design that coincidentally happened to be twice as common as either of the other two really was two distinct designs. The other two were very obviously distinct. The thing is, these four basic patterns were clearly different from each other, but if you compared a dozen copies of any single design, there was still a ton of variation because you simply can’t blend two colors together at the same time and get a predictable look. It’s like pouring bowls of cereal. A bowl of Lucky Charms is going to be obviously different from a bowl of Froot Loops, but you’ll never get two bowls of Lucky Charms to pour exactly the same way.
Woah, this was one of the first parts I ever special-ordered as a kid!
In retrospect, I have no idea why, I never thought of a good use for it!
Man I had both Piraka Stronghold and the Lava Chamber Gate as a kid, so this part is insanely nostalgic for me. I loved how one side had a staircase going straight up while the other had one going sideways. Granted no one could really fit on those stairs, but it looked cool. Funnily enough, I started trying to rebuild those two sets earlier this year, still missing a few parts but it's going well!
Well this is a BIONICLE Part, but it doesn't depict anything in particular so I'll keep the "lore" short (As it really applies to the sets and not the part.) In all cases this part is just the rocks the structure was built on top of.
The Piraka Stronghold was a massive structure the Piraka built on the island of Voya Nui after enslaving it's Matoran populous. Notable features of the structure included a massive vat containing the Antidermis of the then-presumed-dead Makuta Teridax and a contraband/weapons area where the Toa Nuva's masks and tools were kept after the Piraka stole them.
Piraka Outposts were 12 defensive structures built around the island to monitor for threats. Each had a massive "Nektann" gun mounted on the top and had self reconstructing/repair abilities. One was once temporarily destroyed by Nuparu.
The Lava Chamber Gate was a massive drawbridge over a river of lava that served as one of the final "obstacles" on the Staircase of 777 Steps that led to the Legendary Mask of Life. While using his air attacks Kongu accidently destroyed the bridge trying to stop the Piraka. This slowed down the Toa Inika enough for the Piraka to reach the Chamber of Life first.
I'm really not sure what to think of this type of element...
It's kind of trying to get the spirit of the raised baseplates along, but IMO fails in achieving it. It is far less versatile, since it only offers a few Technic pin holes as connection points as opposed to it's classic counter parts and at the same time is much less iconic than the ones used in 6276, 6281 or 6983 (just to name a few).
I also remember back in 2007 people calling part 59232 (Fantasy Era Flail) to feel 'Megablok-ish', because it had all the 'economic' gaps in it and being super-specialised... This element gives me that feeling even more, to me it's just a downgrade of the raised baseplates that were common in the '90ies, it just feels a bit cheap and non-Lego-ish.
However they still managed to give a set more substance (and thus both more play and display value) but still keep the costs relatively low, so I will give them at least this portion of credit.
For all the people in here wondering how they could use this piece, here are a few MOCs that have used it pretty efficiently:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nannanz/10266803973
https://flic.kr/p/2jaQR89
This looks like a kinda useless piece
Reminds me of those old mountainous baseplates castles used to be built on. Would be interesting to see how a full blown fortress looked built on one of these rather than the happy skeletons those Bionicle sets gave us
@LegoDavid said:
"For all the people in here wondering how they could use this piece, here are a few MOCs that have used it pretty efficiently:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nannanz/10266803973
https://flic.kr/p/2jaQR89
"
Damn those are pretty good. I like the NPU for the cobra hood.
If I had one of these for each black technic pin I have, I would build real-life scale Mordor.
These would look great in a space mountain command post build, just need to add to my next bricklink order as not that expensive, probably because most people didn't know they existed until this page appeared.
Oh hey, I had the one of these from 8624. Never really knew what to make of it; like so much of that set, it just felt like kind of a wild miss to me... the little outpost in the set was just a side-build, anyway, which hardly felt like it needed so much bulking up.
Maybe it was more useful in the sets where it was part of a bigger build, though.
I couldn't work out the scale either - when I looked at the part description and saw it was tagged with "PIN HOLE", I thought maybe the cross-shape on the top, was the size of a Technic "conn.bush" (eg 43093)...
Just been carrying a few of these around today, wondering how to store them in a convenient way.
I like the natural look of these, like a support for a rail track or something.