Random set of the day: Tuner Garage
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 8681 Tuner Garage, released during 2006. It's one of 23 Racers sets produced that year. It contains 652 pieces, and its retail price was US$39.99/£29.99.
It's owned by 880 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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30 comments on this article
The police here are so ludicrously dedicated to their job that they’ll specifically wait outside a garage to immediately pursue any cars that leave it.
Might want to talk to Hulk about that gamma radiation, box art fist.
Speed Limit says 55. How fast can you possibly get just two feet outside the garage to make the Police angry at you?
Another version of good ol' Flame Glider in this set, the yellow one!
In fear we remain of the day that the Fist of Vengeance returns to bring about Ragnarok
@MCLegoboy said:
"Speed Limit says 55. How fast can you possibly get just two feet outside the garage to make the Police angry at you?"
As the Bard said: I...can't...drive...fifty-five!
I still remember when Lego did a version of the Cars trailer with the characters from the Cars sets, but since there wasn't a Lego version of the sheriff, the police car from this set stood in for him in a brief shot.
What’s the vintage taxi doing up there?!
City seems kinda' laxed in allowing a garage to double as a drag-strip...
god i loved racers as a kid.
@Monopoly said:
"The police here are so ludicrously dedicated to their job that they’ll specifically wait outside a garage to immediately pursue any cars that leave it."
I would be inclined to agree, but I don’t think so. That garage is white.
Aside from the truly obscene amount of stickers, this is the kind of set I loved about Racers.
Racers is one of the most underappreciated themes ever. The kid inside me would have gone nuts with a set like this...
I miss the times when LEGO used to be more experimental and willing to try out new things like this. Everything we get nowdays just feels way too standardized and safe. And whenever they do attempt something somewhat new, like the recent Stuntz line (which I bought specifically because it reminded me of Racers) it is always branded under a pre-existing successful theme like City instead of being its own thing.
These sets make me want to build minifig-scale versions of them.
@LegoDavid
Wildlife was pretty nice, but it indeed was also branded as city for some reason.
This was the first multi-car Tiny Turbos set. For some reason it didn't appear in a U.S. catalog until January 2007.
@HAL_9001 said:
"As the Bard said: I...can't...drive...fifty-five!"
"Because it only goes... thirty-eight!"
When you see the level of detail in 30343 I'd love to see what a revitalized Tiny Turbo's range could do with custom, not licensed cars
I completed the Tiny Turbos subtheme half a year ago. I was surprised, how well those launching mechanisms actually work. The worst thing about this set is not the amount of stickers, but rather the common at that time "Sticker over Assembly", those are just the worst.
Ah the good old the Fist and the Furious sets.
I still really like this set, I got a few of the Tiny Turbos sets when I was younger, but this set is my favourite of all of them.
@Monopoly:
A couple guys who used to do a radio call-in show for car repair advice did a Worst Cars of the Millennium that pretty much just covered the 20th century. One of the anecdotes that got included was someone who would always get tailed by the sheriff if they happened to get spotted, because their Yugo couldn’t do the minimum speed limit on this particular road going uphill.
@MCLegoboy:
That...depends on the car and the driver.
@brick_r:
You’ve apparently never heard of Woodward Ave in Detroit. My dad says when he was growing up, there was a custom garage on Woodward that could modify you car so the cops could never catch it (until the cops started bringing their cars in for similar upgrades). People would drag race up and down Woodward all night during the summer, so this pretty cleanly mirrors that lifestyle. These days, Woodward Ave is more famous for the annual Woodward Dream Cruise, which I believe is the largest assembly of classic cars in the world.
Great set. We had a ton of fun with this, and then my nephew liked it so much that I just gave it to him. Great play value for money, and some of the cars were really nice for their size.
have this set but want it in mini fig scale to fit for the city
I didn't know you needed a fist that huge to do percussive maintenance on your car..
@goldenguy880:
It depends on whether it’s been seeing regular use, or if it’s a barn find. A lot of moving parts may have seized up on the latter, if it wasn’t properly prepared for storage.
I miss when Lego made sets hyping up the potential of crime and framed the police as trouble makers. Made for some interesting play scenarios.
The American-prototype speed limit sign is an extreme rarity. With the exception of the octagonal stop sign, pretty much all of Lego's other road signs have been European. And the stop sign hardly counts, since even though it was developed in the US, it has spread all over the world.
Where is random set of the day?
@AllenSmith:
Yeah, part of that is cultural, but the US sign system also doesn’t really work well with some of the parts they’ve made. There’s a complete sign post that has a triangular sign, but the only triangular sign I can think of in the US is the yield sign, which is inverted. The clip-on triangle sign can work for that, but not the old one-piece design. The only other one I can think of is the Do Not Enter sign. I’ve got a No Entry sign that uses the same iconography (red circle with a white horizontal bar in the center, and white block text above and below the bar), which was also a Tiny Turbos sticker. I’d guess most instances of a US street sign (excluding the stop sign) came on Tiny Turbos sticker sheets. For one, it’s clearly based on American car culture, so it makes sense to keep it at least somewhat familiar. For another, stickers are a way around restrictions on printed parts. If it’s printed, it typically needs to be reusable in other sets. Stickers allow them to include a wide variety of deco that you’ll often never see again. Even so, a lot of those stickers are clearly European in design. I’ve also got a European “50” speed limit sign, a triangular sign with the “curves ahead” warning, and a blue square with a giant “P” over the word “Parking”. I’m not sure if that last one is used in the US, but the square shape indicates that it represents services of some sort in the US, and the blue color signifies that those services are related to motorists.