@Norikins said:
"Imagine waiting for a taxi, then discovering you can't fit in it."

couple of headlight bricks for the front to put the taxi tile, and a steering wheel on the top. Only one could be staing on top of the taxi with the driver sitting.

Is/was blue & black a color scheme for taxis in any specific part of the world? I don’t think I’ve ever encountered one that looks like this.

Vehicle is Shriner-sized. Minifig should be wearing a fez.

This is what happened when LEGO asked the SPACE team to design an enclosed car.

There was a lot of confusion in those early years, I think.

But they figured it out.

A crying shame that Lego didn't do the sensible thing there and then, and knock minifigures on the head as a bad idea.

It's so cute and tiny!

Scandinavians always choose small cars

First RSOTD for ages I actually own. Must dig it out again.

You can see why Lego space took off in 1979, hang on a minute move the windscreen to the front leaving 4x2 empty studs behind and you have a moon buggy taxi service!

My first own lego ever - as opposed to my brother's or my uncles'. I was 5/6 y.o. I've still got it, though the "taxi" sign can hardly be read now :)

@brick_:
Nope. Tiles aren’t quite as thick as plates, so there’s less stress when jammed between two rows of studs like this. They also don’t have studs, so there’s nothing to intersect the studs on the printed side, preventing it from being fully seated without shifting to one side or the other. They used this same technique to mount the American Flag on the moon’s surface for the Ideas Saturn V.

@Kenmore said:
"What a lovely rush of nostalgia for this simple set and minifig - just getting a minifig felt like an event back then. This was one I had as a child and looking at the other Town Sets in that year, I had the garage, snack bar and police station. Compared to today these may have been very simple but they felt like a golden age."

I'm right with you!
I guess the closest we've had recently was the Star Wars planets - a decent micro build and accompanying figure. They should do more like that to suit tiny pockets!

I said, "hop in".

@MeisterDad said:
"Nice mix of universal set ideas and the new concept in minifigs, although the fig was already 2 years old at the time."
Minifigs with moveable arms and legs were introduced in 1978. It always struck me as odd that they released these (some more from 1978: https://brickset.com/sets/year-1978?query=600-608 ) alongside 4-wide vehicles that could properly seat minifigures. I guess they were designed to a pocket money pricepoint.

Had this set along with the fire chiefs, ambulance and a Shell branded car. A simpler time

I miss that fender piece. And that torso print for that matter...

@Jelonek76 said:
"Wow, my first lego set! "

Same here! My first Lego set, back in 1980!!!

This is how you know Slyboots, from Adventurers, was a serious villain: while all the other Adventurers characters in 1998 had all-new torso prints, he simply stole this guy's clothes instead!

Or maybe this minifigure IS Slyboots in his pre-villain days, before he grew a beard and got the eye test that told him he needed glasses; perhaps he got so fed-up of jokes about not being able to fit into his taxi that it drove him to a life of crime...

It's always fun when distinctive minifigure parts are reused, and then making up silly explanations for why that's the case from an in-universe perspective xD But in all seriousness, I did indeed first see that torso on Slyboots when I got 5938, one of my earliest sets... and since all the other Adventurers characters DID have unique torsos, I just assumed that was the case for him too. I was very surprised when, in later years, I eventually learned just how old this design was in comparison!

It's a good job Lego people don't use bananas for scale.

"How big's your new car?"
"Oh, about three bananas by two bananas by a banana and a half."

@ThatBionicleGuy:
Maybe getting stuck with an undriveable car pushed him towards villainhood.

@Peeeeeee:
Of course not. That’s silly. Everyone knows they measure stuff in ants.

Back in '79, sometimes you would call a taxi and a guy on a riding lawnmower would show up, and you just jumped on the back to get where you needed to go. It was a different time.

@brick_r said:
"The Lego Police are gonna' pull him over...his sign's an illegal build...:)"

They would, but if it's the officer from 6600, he won't be able to get in his car, either.

Cute set, though. I have 6600, but I never had this one.

With this random set today from 1979 and the minifig poll of c850 I was curious to see how many were in the Brickset database - just 52 for that year and that also includes Duplo and Fabuland figures. 40 plus years on there are around 800 more available in 2021. No wonder getting the wee taxi and minifig felt like an event, even if at the time it was a pocket money one.

This is a self-driving taxi with seats for zero passengers.

Agree with several ... this was more for impulse purchase on a child's allowance of the late 1970s/early 1980s. And the age it was targeted to (likely 5-7 years old) the concept of what we expect now didn't matter. It was fun to push the little car along the road plates and so forth.

Today, this set would be unacceptable. Forty years ago, it was great fun.

Uber driver

@PDelahanty:
That’s why it has running boards. And if there are more than two of you, you stand on the board with one foot and run with the other, and hope you can keep synchronized pace with whoever else is on the same side of the Roomber as you.

I find it interesting that the "illegal" portion of the build has been around for so long and was done by Lego but that somehow that technique became an "illegal" style. I believe that this very website when reviewing the SHIELD Helicarrier set commented on the "illegal" build of the computer monitors in the control room. I may not remember correctly, I thought that the article mentioned this technique was used for the first time on the Helicarrier. If not sorry, or if so maybe this was all addressed back then. Now this technique has been used in other sets since. I guess no one remembers the sets from the good old days when doing reviews... in my opinion if Lego does it, then its not "illegal".

@aelliott:
The oldest use I know of is the ears on the brickbuilt horses in the famous Yellow Castle. The (previous) most recent use I know of is the American flag in the Ideas Saturn V rocket. The fact that it is continuously done is what shows it’s not an illegal technique. Some of these techniques were previously done for official sets, but banned from official use later on, so the fact that a technique was done at any point in the past is no indiciation that it is not _currently_ deemed an illegal technique. As I said regarding the Dr Strange set, for a technique to be deemed illegal, it has to be _known_ to cause stress to the parts. Many part combinations are possible, but not yet discovered to be so. If you don’t know it’s possible, you can’t determine if it causes undue stress to the parts.

In this particular case, a lot of the confusion stems from the fact that certain connections that are possible with either plates or tiles are considered to be illegal for plates, but perfectly acceptable for tiles. Tiles can fit on edge between two rows of studs, or be held on the edge by a clip or minifig hand, all without causing too much stress to the other part. Plates can’t.