Vintage set of the week: Photo Safari
Posted by Huwbot,
This week's vintage set is 699 Photo Safari, released during 1977. It's one of 13 LEGOLAND sets produced that year. It contains 130 pieces.
It's owned by 344 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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51 comments on this article
I can't bring myself to joke about this set, it's too pure. You can tell what each animal is, despite how abstracted some are, that's great design.
Is that a pure red hippo? I'd assume that's 'cause lego didn't make grey, or maybe even purple, back then. Kinda funny.
All in all though, that's adorable. Such a cute set
Safari, so goody.
Love it!
I can understand many people want pre moulded animals , and LEGO seems to think that too, especially with the recent 5 year or so with many unique animals via City and also Friends.
Nothing wrong with that, but I can always appreciate brick built animals as well, even those old ones are still instantly recognizable.
11015 : Around the World would be a modern 2021 take on brick-built safari.
@GSR_MataNui said: "Is that a pure red hippo?"
Yeah, I was just about to ask what the giant red one was?
A hippo coated in the blood of his victims?
@Zordboy said:
"A hippo coated in the blood of his victims?"
That'll be from the ranger's arms he's just ripped off!
That’s a really terrible Pizza Planet truck.
@Zordboy:
You joke, but hippos kill more people each year than sharks. They have a mouth that opens big enough you could use it as a chair, if you could avoid cutting yourself on the razor-sharp, foot-long knives protruding from it. They’re easy to miss in the water, fiercely territorial, and omnivorous. I once read about a fishing village that was suffering regular attacks from a lone male hippo, and the solution ended up being to move the village about a mile inland, and only come down to the water when they needed to fish.
Simple design, but you know its a Land Rover. I love those wheels. They bring back memories. I used to have so many of them. I need a Time machine to go rescue them from myself.
Very cute. Those brick built animals remind me of the old Ideas books.
I'm huge!
Ah yes, a set from the days when men were men, er, faceless unposeable slabs, and cylinder bricks had solid studs.
@PurpleDave: I hadn't noticed the resemblance to the Pizza Planet truck, but now that you've pointed it out, I cant unsee it.
Safari-themed sets only happened other two times in the Town/City themes since then: 6672 in 1990 and 60267 in 2020. Thought it was an interesting trivia.
I remember I liked that set , but I didn't have it
I so wanted this when I was a kid - I have never seen it in any shops where I lived at the time. Nowadays, I am all for pre-moulded Lego system animals but back then (since they did not exist) I was quite happy with those. It was also hard to reproduce this with your own parts because the 1x4 arches (3659) were fairly rare in the beginning - available in black, red, blue and yellow in those years (late 70s - fair amount in Home Maker sets) and now available (since late 90s) in pretty much every possible colours. I got the modern version of it 60267 (and all the new wildlife sets).
Its amazing that even after almost half a century the LEGO pieces themselves really haven't changed all that much and it still conveys so much creativity with the mix of colors and shapes.
That red gorilla is awesome!
I can't help it, I love the Classics. Sorry nay sayers, this is still beautiful to me.
The blue elephant is too cute. I might have to build it!
@Zordboy said:
" @GSR_MataNui said: "Is that a pure red hippo?"
Yeah, I was just about to ask what the giant red one was?
A hippo coated in the blood of his victims?"
Fun fact, there are chemical compounds in hippo sweat that act as sunscreen and antiseptic; these chemicals turn red (then eventually brown) with exposure to air and sunlight which does occasionally make it look like hippos are sweating blood. So this guy could just be incredibly nervous at being photographed and is just sweating buckets!
But this set does demonstrate the innate playability of Lego; no need for printed bricks or minute detail, you can tell what every single one of those animals is supposed to be with just a few blocks
Yeah, of course i wanted this set back then. Who wouldn’t!
Is that an illegal building technique I spot on the top of the roof?
I love the old Land Rover! I really wish we could get a new version of this set, with new Lego animals. Maybe a Sir David Attenborough tribute set for when he was young filming Zoo Quest?
The guy doesn’t seem overly impressed at how the animals have very conveniently lined up for the photo.
Wow. I had no idea that the cowboy hat predates the minifigure.
Awesome. I love how the zebra stripes go the wrong way :)
I received this from LEGO in Wrexham after I collected golden studs and filled in three bricks worth. They sent a lovely letter to apologise for not having any of the packs of bricks and sent me the safari instead. Those yellow arches were great and I used them a lot building castles at the time.
Love the cowboy hat and the brick built animals. Very cute and very useful. Thank you LEGO.
@Rimefang said:
"Wow. I had no idea that the cowboy hat predates the minifigure. "
Yep, it was one of the three headgear options in the protofig era, along with the twintail hair piece that stopped being used in the early 90s, and the peaked cap that is still around today.
Such a cool little set! Again I honestly feel this is much better than most sets aimed at younger kids nowadays. Just basic pieces in a limited number of colors versus big specialized pieces in a rainbow of colors. So much you could do with just this one set. Minifigs are an improvement though, I had a few of these kind of figs back in the day, but I only used those pieces for other purposes.
Just had a look at the instructions, three building steps for the elephant, three for the lion, and just a single picture for the other three. I bet Lego would nowadays use at least 5 steps for any of those :-)
And in those instructions some more awesome sets I had never seen before, like 371-3, 373 or 663 .
@PjtorXmos:
Yeah. It’s a bit less problematic because the single stud can nest down between the pinching studs, so it almost lets the vertical plate fully nest. Not quite, but close. It’s still thicker than a tile, though, which is the other problem.
@Rimefang:
Probably for a previous VSOTW, I looked that up, and it appears to have denoted male plank fits. Pigtails was for women, and officer caps were job related.
I’m just here to appreciate the armless minifigs. Sure, some people (and even TLG) claim that minifigures started in 1978, but let’s show some love to these guys who were the true pioneers!
@Mandalorian6285 said:
"is that a blue elephant...?"
Thank you for addressing the elephant in the room.
(Yes, it is.)
At least it's not a white elephant....
@WizardOfOss:
I’d rather white than pink…
But do you know why elephants wear pink socks?
Even though I remember the era before moulded animals and I had a set with brick-built horses, I prefer moulded creatures. The only exceptions are large beasts.
Those who claim that nostalgia clouds the perception of older builders are disproved by the facts that some old-timers, like me, don’t care for brick-built animals (such as those in 31120) and some younger builders do.
@PurpleDave said:
" @PjtorXmos:
Yeah. It’s a bit less problematic because the single stud can nest down between the pinching studs, so it almost lets the vertical plate fully nest. Not quite, but close. It’s still thicker than a tile, though, which is the other problem."
The front of the hippo’s and the zebra’s heads also use what is now considered an illegal technique.
@PurpleDave said:
" @Zordboy:
You joke, but hippos kill more people each year than sharks."
Hippos are indeed extremely dangerous. In terms of human fatality, they’re the third most deadly animal in Africa.
@PurpleDave said: "You joke, but hippos kill more people each year than sharks."
I know. That's why I was asking.
One interesting fact, is that the "headlights" of this vehicle are stickers on the side of arch bricks.
Also the Safari sticker is over multiple parts unfortunately.
The actual LEGO headlight brick didn't appear until 1980, alongside the 1x1 round stud.
Beautiful set. I still have two of them. Sealed.
I have never seen those headligt pieces before…
@Martin_S said:
"I have never seen those headligt pieces before…"
They are round sticker on the side of an arch brick.
@miskox said:
"Beautiful set. I still have two of them. Sealed."
Did you get them in the ‘70s or did you buy them more recently on the secondary market?
do notice how well-behaved these animals are, all close together for a family photo with no cycle-of-life occurrences whatsoever!
I'm not sure, maybe they are just jostling for the front row so that they have an advantage when the safari person releases the small animal from the trailer and lunch is streamed live to the 'not for kids' channel.
You can tell it's a photographer and not a hunter because there are no lights on that camera.
This must be a really late pre-minigig set which I assume left production at some time the next year - I like the 4x1 arches used to make the Land Rover wheel arches and it looks far better than the soon to come hexagonal wheel arches would do in the same situation. Despite this set being around in my prime Lego phase, I have never seen it before!
@Lip_McTile:
Well, they’re made out of bricks, so this is clearly the entrance where they get you all excited by showing you representations of the critters that only your tour guide will be able to spot for the rest of the ride.
Yes, a cute set. Surprised they never had have a Legoland Town version in the 1980s that was this extensive. I like how the animals are lined up for kind of a group photo of sorts and the "photographer" is just kind of grouping them together perfectly.
Today, City builders have enough to build a zoo, with current sets and items available through Bricklink, that they could re-create a scene similar to this. No minifig-scale hippo, though, but there is a Friends zebra and a giraffe that could be used.
@Zander: I bought them 10 or so years ago. When I was a kid it was very hard to get LEGO (I was growing up in a former Yugoslavia and it was not possible to buy LEGO there - we had to go to Italy, Austria, Germany to get them).
This was one of my first sets as a very young kid… and I absolutely loved it! Epic play value. Many adventures had, and dreams kindled. Virtually perfect.
Are we sure he's innocently taking pictures, looks like he's towing a cage! Those ball and socket joints were awesome, though you can't see them in the image.
@ambr said:
"I'm not sure, maybe they are just jostling for the front row so that they have an advantage when the safari person releases the small animal from the trailer and lunch is streamed live to the 'not for kids' channel. "
Unless the Lion King lied to me, The animals die, they become the grass, then the lions eat the grass. Circle of Life, right?*
(*Yes, I'm being silly and I know lions don't eat grass... they eat whatever momma lion brings them.. 'King of the Jungle' ha!)