Slizer. Can someone remind me why?

With a face only a mother could love.

@Lego_Lord_Mayorca:
But he was so difficult to pose! You had about half a dozen joints in each leg, and they never worked the way you wanted them. You'd have to work your way down the entire leg to pose each component individually. If it was that bad for creating a display pose before putting it on a shelf for the next year, how bad was it for kids who actually wanted to incorporate it into playtime?

@Zordboy said:
"The one thing I remember about this guy was the ankle joints were terrible. They weren't solidly-connected, they were free swinging. It annoyed the hell out of me. I remember having to add a couple of Technic pieces to tighten up the connection and let the guy stand upright.

Fast forward 20 years. The more things change ... "

Wow I never looked too closely and always assumed they used worm gears like the torsos in the rest of the sets. Easy mod but shocking they didn't just do that.

I have most of the Slizer line and this dude is easily one of my favorites.

I came here for the Star Wars jokes. @560heliport, you did not disappoint.

@PurpleDave said:
" @Lego_Lord_Mayorca:
But he was so difficult to pose! You had about half a dozen joints in each leg, and they never worked the way you wanted them. You'd have to work your way down the entire leg to pose each component individually. If it was that bad for creating a display pose before putting it on a shelf for the next year, how bad was it for kids who actually wanted to incorporate it into playtime?"

I might have done some adjustments to the build, but I know for display, I had him in a seated position. Looked a little silly, but avoided him falling over constantly. Remember, back in 2000, there was no benchmark for poseable LEGO constraction figures larger than the tiny Throwbots, so my child mind was definitely more forgiving towards the wonky attempt at making a poseable figure with the ball joints they had at the time.

Looks more like a "Blasted"...:D

Ironically this is the only Throwbot / Slizer character I never owned. Even as a kid I thought he looked a bit sloppy. More surprising is the fact that he includes an illegal technique in his build. The socket piece in the center holding the disc is attached by putting an axle thru the holes on the side of the socket, which wears down the socket's clutch power over time. (As I learned from using that technique in a bunch of MOCs myself.) They were obviously a bit looser with the rules back then, but I don't think any other official set used that method again. (Although some combiner models might have.) Anyway, that's the story I associate with Blaster, heh.

It's cute the way he stores his extra disk in his tummy pouch.

@sir_vasco said:
"It's cute the way he stores his extra disk in his tummy pouch."

That's not a tummy pouch he's using to hold it there :-O

Still has more gears than some Technic sets in recent years ;-)

I rewatched Mad Max 3 a few days ago, and my immediate thought was 'Is there a Master too'?

@Quinnly said:
"Slizer. Can someone remind me why?"

Once 8 slizers lived happely on a planet and held a friendly matches.
Then a meteorite killing half the planet and giving birth to 4 mutant slizers.
The Mutants now start a battle against the surviving slizers.
This one is a bad guy

I was way into my dark ages when Slizzers came out. I remember quite vividly how aghast I was when I saw these sets on the shelves. To my eyes, accustomed to classic lego town, space, castle nad pirates these seemed like something from a completely different company. I remember thinking back then that lego is over if they make such crap instead of sweet interlocking bricks.

I remember getting this guy after getting Millennium from the same wave, thinking that they both had bigger, more interesting builds in comparison with the usual Slizer. Unfortunately Blaster is not quite as robust as Millennium and I was disappointed enough in his floppy, gappy build that I went out and got Flare fairly swiftly…

@xccj:
It might not actually be considered an illegal technique, even if it should be. They have to know it causes a problem before they can ban its use. Regardless, a trick I posted to MaskofDestiny many years ago puts _much_ more wear and tear on those socket joints.

Ah, Blaster. I remember only learning about the existence of Blaster, Spark and Flare after they were gone from shelves and seeing instructions of Blaster at a friend's house. I didn't have them in my 2000 catalog as it was the January version and at the time the best way to see what was put there was catalogs, after visiting multiple stores anyway.

I found Blaster and most of the slizers I was missing in 2015 on a flea market. I'm a fan of the theme and since even collected all the disks!

The ankles are a weak point, but at certain poses they work fine. Just splay out the legs and face the feet away from each other and bend the legs a bit.

Blaster is interesting as the very first titan after Millennium. They both have a different approach, with Blaster being more like a constraction combiner whereas Millennium went more with the technic approach with constraction for the joints and detailing.

The latter won out in later themes, although The Boss Roborider is arguably more like a combiner and later even Gadunka and CCBS General Grievous were closer in spirit to Blaster's philosophy of building mostly with constraction for shaping.

Blaster is also interesting for being the basis for Dynamo. You actually don't fully disassemble it and build on from the lower half with Spark and Flare added to the mix. Dynamo makes for a greatly imposing model. Impressive, considering the era! It had the same ankle problem as Blaster, but also the same solution.

@Quinnly said:
"Slizer. Can someone remind me why?"

I thought they were pretty cool. I've got 4 of them. Think they were the first Mech like thing we could buy, so to me they were very welcome.

Ah, my third Slizer. You know, at the time, I thought that Blaster was the good guy and Millennium the villain of the new Slizer wave. The comic image in the catalogue that introduced them, after all, showed three of the new Slizers in silhouette and the accompanying text described them as "Millennium Slizer and Buddies" (https://images.brickset.com/library/view/?f=catalogues/c00uk&p=51); so even though the middle silhouette matched Blaster's appearance, I took the text description as accurate and the image as mistaken.

I don't remember if I actually ever planned to get Blaster; but while we were visiting my grandparents in Scotland, we took a trip into one of the bigger cities (I want to say Glasgow, but I'm not certain), where one of the large sells-everything shops had a bunch of interesting Lego sets on reduction. Blaster was one of them; and I was still on a huge Slizers kick so even though it was tough to decide between everything present, it was ultimately a no-brainer for me that he'd be one of the ones I'd buy. (The other being 4818.)

Blaster spent many years as the legendary hero of my Slizer - and sometimes Bionicle, because I crossed them over often - adventures before I learned that he was actually supposed to be the villain. Even now, my instinct when I look at him is to think Blaster = good guy, Millennium = bad guy; I try to remind myself otherwise, but this was engrained in my mind for so long that I just can't fully convince myself xD;

@RaiderOfTheLostBrick said:
"I rewatched Mad Max 3 a few days ago, and my immediate thought was 'Is there a Master too'?"

I came here to see it anyone had mentioned "Beyond Thunderdome". Was not disappointed!

"Two Slizer's enter, one Slizer leaves!"

Slizers were my favorite Technic theme as a kid, but I missed Blaster and City initially, leaving my kid self's collection incomplete. More than a decade later, a friend I'd known for years at that point (and never discussed Lego with) casually mentioned that he had both and agreed to give them to me if I paid for that night's (not expensive at all) bar tab.

@thor96 said:
"I was way into my dark ages when Slizzers came out. I remember quite vividly how aghast I was when I saw these sets on the shelves. To my eyes, accustomed to classic lego town, space, castle nad pirates these seemed like something from a completely different company. I remember thinking back then that lego is over if they make such crap instead of sweet interlocking bricks."

I remember having this sentiment with Bionicle and the associated Throwbots and Roboriders. I've since come around, but at the time, a lot of us felt like "this isn't Lego." You weren't alone. Anyway, I actually have this guy--I assume he was a gift because I don't remember how/why.

Blaster, the stick wielding dude.
The last Slizer (Throwbot for americans) that I got, because I had most of the other ones. Except Millenium, that one was "too expensive".
The first one in the series that had just the cardboard box and no canister - but it had 3 times the part of regular Slizer figure while only being twice as expensive. Its large, bulky, with that fancy wing armor on the back and another 'dagger' piece in hand.
The wobbly legs were mighty annoying - mine actually spent most of its time on a stand made from "fake legos". I just gave him a new stand made from actual legos this month - he still loves to fall over!
A modern annoyance is the rubber band - after 20+ years it turned to dust and there are no legit replacements.

Nice to see a set of the day that I actually own.

@thor96 said: "I remember quite vividly how aghast I was when I saw these sets on the shelves. To my eyes, accustomed to classic lego town, space, castle nad pirates these seemed like something from a completely different company."

I was the same. I'd grown up and definitely considered myself a purist when it came to Lego Town and Castle and Space ... at this point, I didn't own a single Technic set. I still don't own many of them ... but, by contrast? I absolutely loved the Slizer throwbots. I just thought they were so different and unusual. I'd never seen anything like them before.