Random set of the day: Inflight Sales
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 7212 Inflight Sales, released during 2003. It's one of 38 Creator sets produced that year. It contains 129 pieces, and its retail price was US$10.
It's owned by 158 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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23 comments on this article
Only 13 creations!? I feel that with every new addition of these sets in RSotD every time we get less builds...
Another designer set. I think this one has medium blue!
Well at least it's better than the meals, am I right?
SkyMall set!
@MCLegoboy
You’re so right, depending on how hungry you are. I’ve been on trans-Pacific flights so much that sometimes when you’re already 10+ hours in, that mystery meat with rice and freeze-dried vegetables really hits the spot.
But nothing beats the Cup Noodle a few hours before landing.
That has to be one of the more interesting set names I've heard.
Well, that certainly is a title isn't it
@MCLegoboy said:
"Well at least it's better than the meals, am I right?"
Not necessarily. I used to travel a lot with my parents when I was a kid, and a trick we learned, really early, was that the kids' meals are so much better than the adult meals.
@MCLegoboy said:
"Well at least it's better than the meals, am I right?"
*shudders* Airline food... What is UP with that stuff?
;-)
@MCLegoboy said:
"Well at least it's better than the meals, am I right?"
I would eat this set over airline food any day
Here's the corresponding set that was RSotD last year:
https://brickset.com/article/59773/random-set-of-the-day-high-flyers
@Lego_mini_fan said:
"Another designer set. I think this one has medium blue!"
Yep, 4401 and 4099 have it in spades as well.
@GSR_MataNui said:
"Well, that certainly is a title isn't it"
BrickLink lists it as Sky Squad. I think we've got another "My Dad" situation although far less funny and probably more accidental than Huw's daughters messing with the archives. Although I'm not sure how you get this name from either instance.
https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=7212-1
I was thinking this looked familiar, like the set I raided to make a base for my Bionicle probe droid, but it turns out it’s just a lite version of 4098 High Flyers. That explains where all the white parts went.
@Zordboy:
Kid’s meals tend to use simpler flavors. Lower cabin pressure messes with your sense of smell, which really puts a damper on your sense of taste. Complex favors that adults tend to favor will taste very different at lower altitudes where they’re probably developed, but you won’t know what passengers will experience unless you eat them at cruising altitude.
The good news is, with the development of carbon-fiber hulls, planes will be able to handle a full atmosphere of pressurization, even at cruising altitude, so smell and taste will no longer be so impacted.
I experienced an extreme version of this the week of Thanskgiving, 2020. On my way out the door to go to world I realized that my sense of taste was off. I hadn’t noticed when eating breakfast, and I thought I’d hit a bubble of unflavored toothpaste, but when I popped a stick of mint gum in my mouth, I realized I probably had Covid. For several days, I didn’t like eating anything, because I didn’t know which flavors I’d be able to taste, and which I wouldn’t. Real mustard (the yellow kind that pretentious adults shun) was about the only thing that tasted normal. Ice cream just tasted generically sweet, and BBQ sauce that should have some kick just tasted like molasses.
So, yeah, I suspect a gas station hot dog would have tasted better than a five-star restaurant at that point.
@MCLegoboy:
This was an airline promo set, so you could only purchase it through inflight sales, apparently. Why that got entered as the name, I couldn’t say.
Okay so on Bunnings Airlines you get an in flight sausage sizzle, and on Lego Airlines you get this.
In regards to in flight food, as a child yes I would have much preferred this to the aeroplane food. At least you guys get food. These days in Australia in flight 'meals' consist of one weird museli bar looking thing and a drink (with the customary sorry we don't have that, sorry we don't have that. When I was little flights used to have apple juice, now they only ever seem to do orange juice). The only good meal I've ever had was on Cathay Pacific, they did a great pineapple dessert.
@Brickchap:
Inflight meal service used to be standard, but those airlines started getting their clocks cleaned by affordable airlines like Southwest (to the point that they got US Congress to pass an anti-competitive law that hindered Southwest’s operations in and around Texas for decades until it was finally repealed). Meal service is expensive to run, and on many flights you just don’t have the time required to serve them unless you’ve got the meal carts rolling down the aisle as soon as the inflight safety lesson is concluded. Now, you need a flight of a certain continuous duration before they’ll feed you more than packaged snacks. Heck, my parents and I flew from Detroit to Seattle, practically had to run across the terminal to catch the next hop from Seattle to Anchorage, spent a total of about 13 hours en route, and never got full meals provided. If we hadn’t met up with my brother on the connection, we would have been ravenous by the time we got there. Thankfully I realized how close we were cutting it by the time we touched down, so as soon as they allowed electronics to be turned back on, my dad was able to call him and get him to buy us sandwiches, because they had already boarded about half the plane by the time we got to the gate.
@MCLegoboy said:
" @GSR_MataNui said:
"Well, that certainly is a title isn't it"
BrickLink lists it as Sky Squad. I think we've got another "My Dad" situation although far less funny and probably more accidental than Huw's daughters messing with the archives. Although I'm not sure how you get this name from either instance.
https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=7212-1"
When it made its way into U.S. catalogs in mid-2004, it was definitely called Sky Squad.
@PurpleDave said:
"you won’t know what passengers will experience unless you eat them at cruising altitude."
I would have thought it the height bad manners to eat the passengers at cruising altitude, or any altitude really.
For some reason I really thought that said Inflight Snakes and was expecting Samuel L Jackson to show up. Need to get my eyes checked…
I also thought inflight meals were terrible, until I did my first flights to the (far) east. And found out that airline food actually can be pretty decent. It seems some foods hold up a lot better than others. And even Aeroflot now has better food than I ever had at my flights to the US....
As for this set, 129 pieces and 13 models? And I just checked a few more than on that one picture, and it's definitely not bad. I like it!
That plane and chopper are flying gangbusters to get away from whatever is exploding in the centre. Possibly an airline food delivery?
The name here really through me for a loop, but I definitely own a copy of this set--found it complete in a thrift store about a year ago, and was pleasant surprised how nostalgic something from 2003 made me. There was a lot of dross in LEGO's portfolio then, but some things (such as the Creator sets) were pretty decent, even then.
@Formendacil:
This was Designer, not Creator.
"Hi, could I interest you in an Inflight Sale?"