Random set of the day: Fuel Tanker
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 6696 Fuel Tanker, released during 1984. It's one of 17 Town sets produced that year. It contains 106 pieces and 1 minifig.
It's owned by 422 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you should find it for sale at BrickLink or eBay.
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25 comments on this article
A real life brand? LEGO marketing real fuel to children? What are they going to do with it?
@MCLegoboy said:
"A real life brand? LEGO marketing real fuel to children? What are they going to do with it?"
Kids, this is not a boat. I repeat, this is _not_ a boat.
Nice, it's probably high in lead, too. Or at least highly plastic. Regardless, not the best to burn around children.
I want a gas tanker rigged like a fire truck. Make the buildings burn down faster instead of putting them out.
I own 6695. Loved it as a kid. Didn’t know until now that there was an Exxon clone of it. Even the box picture is staged the same.
@Shadowcloner said:
"I want a gas tanker rigged like a fire truck. Make the buildings burn down faster instead of putting them out. "
In Denmark and most of the rest of Europe, fire engines aren’t articulated. So this doesn’t look like a petrol tanker to European eyes (not to mention that fire engines are generally red in Europe).
@Zander:
I think @Shadowcloner was referring to having the hose with the same nozzle seen on many firefighting vehicles. I got it right away, but I also look at this and see that it could be the hose they plug into the fill port in the concrete so they can pump the fuel into underground tanks. There really wasn't anything that looked like that until the x131 hose showed up, and those rubber hoses were tough to pose.
So that's where Wreck-Gar got the phrase after putting Ultra Magnus back together.
Since I liked the era and didn't have this, I cloned it with my spares. And I recently added a small gas station to my town to complete the scene.
For a moment I thought it had only four wheels and freaked out, wondering if four wheeled articulated trucks even exist.
Then I saw the 3rd pair of wheels. In my defense, that minifig really seems to want to block our sight of them!
And this might be an unpopular opinion, but I never liked the constant co-branding with Exxon and later Shell back in the day. It made them stick out way too much amidst the otherwise mostly real-world brandless set designs. Octan is much better in that regard. (Most other brands were promotional or hard to find).
And Octan can't be bad! They only make our fuel, coffee, ice cream, our food supply, hospitals, history books, voting machines...
@MCLegoboy said:
"A real life brand? LEGO marketing real fuel to children? What are they going to do with it?"
Play with it. Like they play with cars even though they don't drive.
Lego City doesn't have any trucks nowadays, does it?
The design of LEGO Town tankers stayed pretty consistent for a good decade--this 1984 set predates me and my LEGO collection, but I have 6594 and was immediately reminded of it. Though they're obviously not identical, they can easily coexist in the same world.
@darthnorman said:
"Lego City doesn't have any trucks nowadays, does it?"
It has trucks, but the last fuel truck was 60294 : Stunt Show Truck, which is a cut-open fuel/water/whatever tanker.
The last regular (not 4+) City tanker truck was 60016 : Tanker Truck from 2013, but the same logo with the leaves re-appeared in 2023 40634 : Icons of Play , so it's not all Octan-E yet.
Octan fuel tanks also appear in 2 large space rocket sets, 60351: Rocket Launch Center and 80035: Monkie Kid's Galactic Explorer.
The last actual regular tanker truck set seems to be from Marvel 76067 : Tanker Truck Takedown
I do miss the chunky wheels although a pair at the back seem to have being lost already. Winding and unwinding the hose from the reel was always popular whether dispensing petrol or water, so shame discontinued a while back.
I assume the branding was to tie in with small Lego sets sold or given away in promotions at Shell (European) and Exxon (US) service stations, although I don't know if this model (or Exxon) version was ever sold this way or just in regular toy shops.
No chance Lego would team up with an oil company nowdays...
@Shadowcloner said:
"I want a gas tanker rigged like a fire truck. Make the buildings burn down faster instead of putting them out. "
Sounds like the firefighters / firetrucks from Fahrenheit 451.
@GenericLegoFan said:
"No chance Lego would team up with an oil company nowdays..."
Which is a shame....the Shell polybags were more or less what got me out of my dark ages.
@WizardOfOss said:
" @GenericLegoFan said:
"No chance Lego would team up with an oil company nowdays..."
Which is a shame....the Shell polybags were more or less what got me out of my dark ages."
Yeah,oil companies got really controversial this century.
@GenericLegoFan said:
"No chance Lego would team up with an oil company nowdays..."
They don't need to, now they have Speed Champions. They occasionally have adverts for oil companies as part of the design.
That’s a full complement of sets tagged Exxon picked as RSOTD.
Like other commenters above, I had no idea of this set existing until Internet age but young me might have detected a gap in the set numbering between 6695 from 1984 and 6697 from 1985. That goes for other products not offered in the UK too such as 6390 and 6393. Always assumed that these were gaps that would eventually be filled by future releases, rather than belonging to sets sold elsewhere in the world.
@CCC said:
" @GenericLegoFan said:
"No chance Lego would team up with an oil company nowdays..."
They don't need to, now they have Speed Champions. They occasionally have adverts for oil companies as part of the design."
I don't think I've seen any since they transitioned to 8 wide in 2020
This is an update to 554 Fuel Pumper. I have that version.
@PDelahanty said:
"This is an update to 554 Fuel Pumper. I have that version."
Now THAT's a good set. I love the use of window shutters as a cover for the hose.
One of my first sets I remember having.. Awesome set that I played with a lot.