@PurpleDave said:
"Ooh, they figured out how to fuse milk into blocks of solid matter and attach them to planks for delivery. Now, how do you turn them back to liquid? Or are you telling me they don’t even bother to cap the bottles before setting them by your door?

@Harmonious_Building:
Meh. I know where Slurm comes from."

Rotten milk could soldify like that at least partially, but you REALLY wouldn't want to drink it.... or even be in the same building with it.

Is that a STAMP above the cab? Arla-rious.

Cute set. Wouldn't mind owning one, but not at that price! ha ha

@Brickchap:
Necros from The Living Daylights.

@Binnekamp:
1x1 round tiles were over two decades away when this was released, but 1x1 round plates would have worked. Instead they look like solid white cones, or uncapped bottles that bugs will get into, cats will tip over, and will result in a mass recall after people who are a little too trusting end up contracting some nasty infection.

Love these little 4 wide promo vehicles.

@PurpleDave: Um...you don't have to 'fuse' milk to make it a solid, just freeze it...Dairy Queen's been doing it for decades (or at least they use to). If fact I remember in school watching a neat time-lapse movie on effect of freezing on different substances: milk being one, and perhaps the most interesting. It expanses like water (because, duh; it mostly is water), but it squeezed itself out of the bottle; sort of like toothpaste. Didn't break the bottles or anything...

All this talk of milk (and milkmen) reminds me of the Milkman Conspiracy level in Psychonauts 1!

@Brickchap said:
" @Zordboy LOL I know the exact scene you're referencing, can't remember what film it was. Assassin kills the milkman (what did the poor milkman do against him??) then disguises himself as the real milkman and drives into Bond's safehouse estate whatever it is with milk bottle grenades and just yeets them at people. BOOM! Most hilarious.
"

That was from The Living Daylights https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O6C2smMKGI

Nice truck, would have loved to own this back in 1990. Much more interesting than the other 1581.

Classic 4-wide goodness. How could they have improved on this? Well, how about beer instead of milk?

I just mooed!

@brick_r said:
" @PurpleDave: Um...you don't have to 'fuse' milk to make it a solid, just freeze it...Dairy Queen's been doing it for decades (or at least they use to). If fact I remember in school watching a neat time-lapse movie on effect of freezing on different substances: milk being one, and perhaps the most interesting. It expanses like water (because, duh; it mostly is water), but it squeezed itself out of the bottle; sort of like toothpaste. Didn't break the bottles or anything... "
As it happens, you can make plastic from milk. It’s called casein plastic. It wouldn’t be any good for LEGO as the production process distorts its shape unpredictably, but can be - and was in the past - machined to make various things. Would be cool if a third party made LEGO-compatible milk churns or even cows out of milk.

@WizardOfOss:
Modern 6-wide awesomeness. Hey, you asked…

@Zander:
Casein is biodegradable (a bit of a problem), and might be water-soluble (a lot of a problem. There’s a related plastic called galalith, that’s formed from casein and formaldehyde, which is insoluble, but still biodegradable. These days it’s mainly used form buttons because of the severe limitations on how you can work with it. It’s not a thermoplastic, so injection molding is right out. You can cut, drill, emboss, and dye it, and that’s about it. It’s usually produced in sheets, and then machined into buttons these days, so I’m guessing a 3rd-party, LEGO-compatible usage, particularly something as large as a cow, would be a PR stunt that had no hope of recouping the cost to make it happen.

@sjr60:
We got tiny cartons, refrigerated, with our choice of plain or chocolate (also, half a graham cracker). And any politician trying to take those away would have had to deal with the dairy lobby and irate parents everywhere.

@PurpleDave said:
" @WizardOfOss:
Modern 6-wide awesomeness. Hey, you asked…"
Heheh....I could have expected that :-)

It's not that I necessarily disagree, I mean, there's a reason why the moment I got the parts for it, all trucks I built as a kid were 6 wide. But viewed purely as a toy for young kids, I feel 6-wide sets only add unnecessary parts, cost and complexity, while not offering much extra play value. Yes, they look better, but they are way beyond what kids that age would create themselves. It makes them follow instructions to a T instead of inspiring them to use their own creativity. Which even makes me curious: how far apart were the moments Lego stopped showing alternate builds on the back of the box and when 6-wide became the norm?

@
I associate 6-wide with World City. The theme apparently only lasted two years (2003-2004), and there were far more 4-wides in the mix, but the first year saw 7033 and 7034 (I’d personally make that 8-wide, like 7900). Really, it was probably City that really dragged Town into modern times. I believe I’ve seen 7239 singled out as being the antithesis of Jack Stone set design. Again, they couldn’t quite get beyond 4-wides, but there was still 7245 the first year, 7890 and 7891 the next, and 7945 in the third year mixed both in one set. 7990, and to a lesser extent, 7991, 7733, and 7743 are really the sets that made me take notice of the fact that they were doing 6-wide vehicles, though I’d been making my own since late 2006 or early 2007 (I needed a 3-seater that could accommodate a Batman villain and two matching goons, so I didn’t have to always make them ride motorcycles).

For the other half of the equation, I know when SW debuted in 1999, they showed a lightsaber hilt that could be built with one of the OT sets, but I don’t remember them with Batman (2006), so I’d guess the alt builds were on the way out before World City even landed.

What a great classic lego set, I love it!

@WizardOfOss:
My previous post was meant to reply to yours, but I forgot to add your username until it was too late.

@PurpleDave said:
"@
I associate 6-wide with World City. The theme apparently only lasted two years (2003-2004), and there were far more 4-wides in the mix, but the first year saw 7033 and 7034 (I’d personally make that 8-wide, like 7900 ). Really, it was probably City that really dragged Town into modern times. I believe I’ve seen 7239 singled out as being the antithesis of Jack Stone set design. Again, they couldn’t quite get beyond 4-wides, but there was still 7245 the first year, 7890 and 7891 the next, and 7945 in the third year mixed both in one set. 7990 , and to a lesser extent, 7991 , 7733 , and 7743 are really the sets that made me take notice of the fact that they were doing 6-wide vehicles, though I’d been making my own since late 2006 or early 2007 (I needed a 3-seater that could accommodate a Batman villain and two matching goons, so I didn’t have to always make them ride motorcycles).

For the other half of the equation, I know when SW debuted in 1999, they showed a lightsaber hilt that could be built with one of the OT sets, but I don’t remember them with Batman (2006), so I’d guess the alt builds were on the way out before World City even landed."

Alt builds were still going strong with World City and last appeared in 2007. They were often still featured at the end of instructions. Not all sets had them on the boxes by at least around 2005 however. I recall that in 2006 you could occasionally find them on the boxes, in the bionicle playsets from 2007 they still did this but at the end of the instructions.
Yes, even the 2006 Batman sets. Those sure looked wacky! You can still view them in the online instructions!
Interestingly, instructions for the models started to appear more often. Exo-force instructions had online instructions. Bionicle stopped featuring combiners in the instructions, but kept combiners in the Lego Club Magazine. Some only had online instructions, like Botar. Although that goes as far back as Roboriders combiners in 2000! And a weird anomaly is that some sets in 2005 had instructions for the alternate models in the instructions themselves (The two Alpha Team sets of that year). I'd imagine that at that point Lego was already trying to respond to the angry letters of parents whose children couldn't build alts without instructions.