Random set of the day: Furno Bike
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 7158 Furno Bike, released during 2010. It's one of 15 HERO Factory sets produced that year. It contains 165 pieces, and its retail price was US$29.99/£19.99.
It's owned by 1,102 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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26 comments on this article
Another set I own. What are the odds. The build of this set isn't that bad its a nice technic bike with some play features added on to it. Only problem I have with this set is that sometimes the bike just falls down.
First year Hero Facotry sets look so weird because they still have that Bionicle vibe, but are trying not to be. This looks like one of the vehicles from 2008-2009, but with smooth wheels. Probably good for a couple recolors though, and I think the set itself is actually one of the more beloved ones of the theme. Looks a little big for Furno though. Maybe it fits a 2.0 build better.
That's totally the head of a Bionicle creature, mounted on the front of the bike, isn't it?
The BMW HF series bikes.
William Furno was the head of HERO Factory's Alpha Team's rookie division. Under his supervision the other rookies, Breeze and Surge, reached full hero status in record time. Furno had a strong drive to prove himself, though his impatience often got the better of him. This set depicts Furno 1.0, at which point he had only really taken on Von Nebula and his thugs. One of Furno's most notable actions during HERO Factory's first year was helping his overseer, Preston Stormer, overcome a crazed madness inflicted by the villain Meltdown, using his close relationship with the veteran to fight off the mind control.
Furno's Bike was only really used in two missions. A fight against Xplode and Rotor (during which Rotor was captured) and the aforementioned Stormer mind control incident. However, it was a pretty standard issue model for HERO Factory, and a white version (never released as a set) was used by Stormer during a mass Breakout to hunt down the villain Speeda Demon.
Funnily enough I never got my hands on the actual Furno 1.0 set but I did get this bike. I adore it!!!
@Zordboy:
No Bohrok has the ability to bug its eyes out like that, but I suddenly find myself wishing any of the dozen hand-shields had been produced in orange. Dark-orange and two shades of gold are as close as it ever got.
I read that as “Fumo.” I’m seeing Touhou everywhere and I haven’t even played any of the games.
A bicycle belonging to a robot with a fiery name following the review of the new Monkie Kid fire related unicycle. Also, I bet similarly few Bricksetters know Furno's backstory as Nezha's backstory. You'd need to be invested in these themes plot, or you could also know him from Chinese mythology in Nezha's case. It's interesting when Random Sets seem to line up thematically with human-published articles.
@Norikins:
Ever hear of the Birthday Paradox? If you put 23 random people in a room together, there’s a 50% chance that there are two out of the group who share a birthday. Increase the size of the group to 75, and your chances skyrocket to 99.9%. Given the sheer number of traits that LEGO sets can possibly share, it’s really just a matter of time before you get commonality between RSotD and a regular article. And since the articles don’t stop coming, you’ll keep seeing matches. How they match is harder to account for. You’re not looking for specific like two articles about cars, but any random trait out of a list of infinite possibilities. It’s nearly impossible to avoid getting periodic matches.
This is such an awesome set with great value for 30$. All those Technic vehicles we got for Bionicle in 2008-2009 and early Hero Factory were honestly amazing, it is a real shame they completely stopped making them after a while. I guess they didn't sell nearly as well as the regular action figure sets? I am honestly surprised that was the case, since it appears kids are obsessed with the endless streams of oversized cartoony vehicles we get in themes like Ninjago those days, but back then, those larger vehicles seemed to always warm the shelves despite the regular small sets selling pretty well.
I guess this gies as a testament to how being cheap and affordable was one of the keys of the success of Bionicle and Hero Factory. With Bionicle G2 and the Star Wars Ultrabuilds, the prices really started to rise beyond "pocket money" and that ended up killing Constraction all together.
Some people have suggested that perhaps the future of Constraction lies in the new Mixel-Jointed Marvel Mech Style, but honestly I faill to see that. You won't be able to make any vehicles for characters built in that style, will you?
I def wanted this bike back in the day, if just for the cool use of recolored Bionicle elements. But t'was from my broke years so never ended up with it. Cool stuff tho.
I remember getting this for christmas as a kid and spending what could have been hours putting it together.
what I would give to relive that memory..
@PurpleDave
That is true, except there are several similarities between the two sets this time!
It’s always interesting to me that seemingly no matter how weird or ugly the set, it’s almost always somebody’s first introduction to LEGO.
@LegoDavid:
Why would you not be able to make vehicles for smaller constraction figures?
I still can't believe they released a whole new colour of Bohrok windshield pattern for this set, eight years after it was last seen. (Plain and other printed versions of the piece had been seen since then, but not this version, the half-clear, half-coloured one, which was otherwise exclusively seen in 2002.) It's fascinating that they did, but also kind of wild that it just suddenly reappeared so long after?
Alternately, it's too bad none of the *other* main Bohrok pieces exist in orange, or this would have made it possible to build a member of a Legendary Seventh Swarm or something.
In any case, looks like a pretty solid Bionicle set to me, honestly. Just replace the driver with a Matoran or Agori instead, and it would fit right in...
@PurpleDave said:
" @LegoDavid:
Why would you not be able to make vehicles for smaller constraction figures?"
How would you build them, if it were up to you? The Marvel Mech scale is way too small to fit with Technic, and you won't be able to make system vehicles large enough to fit them without making them very big and expensive.
That's one of the advantages of LEGO Technic, you can build very large vehicles on relatively low piece counts.
Great to see both a really playable toy and display piece at the same time for only 165 pieces! The designers had some fun figuring out the shape of a Technic bike around a Hero Factor, which we need more of nowadays to give us something else more sustainable to go with the Mechs rather than at most a small system side build. Similarly, a return of the Scout Trooper and Speeder 75532 would be great!
@NotProfessorWhymzi said:
"On the tenth day of Christmas, Huwbot gave to us...
Yes, Furno’s Bike,
…
Not Jack Stone’s Bike,
"
Side note but I really like how these two lines in your song contrast and yet work with each other XD
I'm kind of upset with myself that I never got this one. It's a cool looking bike.
That empty socket on the side... It's just asking to have one of those handless Good Guys grab onto it. Or perhaps is a logical connection point for a side car build?
@LegoDavid:
Not my job to design them, but I’m just pointing out that you’re saying it’s impossible to build them with a system that is claimed to be able to build anything.
Look, I made the original Toa drakes into a bunch of SW characters. At one point I designed a Scout Trooper (my favorite Imperial troop), and immediately thought it would be cool to have a speederbike for him to ride. Not having much brown available, I kinda thought it was a pipe dream at the time, but one Saturday afternoon I sat down to start a “what if” build and just see where it might go. The next morning I rushed out to buy a Geonosian Starfighter to get two parts, and in less than 24 hours I actually had a final design completed. It looks better than the constraction version, if only because I actually got the steering vanes right. And that’s for something I didn’t think I’d even be able to finish.
It’s only impossible if you give up without even trying. These Bionicle/Hero Factory vehicles were mostly single-seat motorcycle style designs anyways, because anything much bigger would have been way too pricy for the theme, and way too unwieldy to play with. Smaller constraction figures means smaller vehicles as well, so prices should also be smaller as a result, even switching to System. They could even do a mix of System and Technic if that helps. They could make new parts if they need to. Technic has a ton of new parts that weren’t available when this was released, so new possibilities abound, and what may have seemed impossible before might be easy now.
@ElephantKnight:
It’s more likely that it’s the only part that was available that gave you an axle joiner with a third connection on the side that could be used to attach the sphere-shooter to the side. The socket joint is just along for the ride.
in my opinion, I think that the bionicle technic vehicles were bad. They didn't make sense to me as a kid and even now they still don't and yes I did own 8996 so this is coming from personal experience.
A very cool looking set, and one that I have never seen before!
Kids would have loved receiving this one, no doubt!
@PurpleDave said:
" @Norikins:
Ever hear of the Birthday Paradox? If you put 23 random people in a room together, there’s a 50% chance that there are two out of the group who share a birthday. Increase the size of the group to 75, and your chances skyrocket to 99.9%. Given the sheer number of traits that LEGO sets can possibly share, it’s really just a matter of time before you get commonality between RSotD and a regular article. And since the articles don’t stop coming, you’ll keep seeing matches. How they match is harder to account for. You’re not looking for specific like two articles about cars, but any random trait out of a list of infinite possibilities. It’s nearly impossible to avoid getting periodic matches."
I was about to call bullshit on this ….. but what do you know!!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem
Mind blown!
@lemish34:
A lot of people have a hard time wrapping their minds around it, for sure. The site I looked up to get the specific numbers I cited suggests they enter the problem by imagining the chances they could be in a group of 22 other people and find one person who shares their own birthday, but the problem should really be viewed from a position as a non-participating observer. Stand on one side of a window, and look into a room with 23 random people, and it no longer matters which two people share a birthday.
Where I work, I think we have a little over 100 employees. They call out birthdays every month. Nearly every month we have two employees who share a birthday (I happen to be one of those people, at least for a few more years before the other person retires). Some months we have two or three pairs, and sometimes we even have three people who share one birthday. There’s also quite a bit of turnover among new hires, so what we see doesn’t even adequately reflect the truth at any given time, as many of them don’t stick around long enough to have their own birthday called out, so we don’t see how they may be affecting the numbers during their employment.
It’s hard to argue against it when you don’t even have enough employees to cover half the year, and still between 10-20% of them share a birthday with at least one coworker.