I do love the use of part 6140 to help make the landing skids. Even though I also like the Skid piece introduced later.

Is someone else controlling it? It may make sense as it looks like the guy is waving his hands frantically in the air.

It's a good thing for the designer of this helicopter that all helmeted minifigs are the same height ,unless they're wearing epaulets (backpacks wouldn't fit in the chopper, anyway), or he'd be facing some lawsuits.

@dr_legolass: I was already into Lego when this series of promo sets was released, so I made sure to get all four, and had a lot of fun with them. And I find those classic Lego mini-copters like this and 1360 quite charming.

It reminds me of the autogyro from one of the old Bond films....

Same year as Town set 6399. I wonder if in a parallel universe the 6399 are all over, and this one is the white whale.

Called a chopper in this instance because it’s going to chop his head clean off

@dr_legolass said:
"I got into Lego as a kid because my mom helped me collect the UPC symbols on the Cheerios boxes and send them in to get this set (and two others in the promo series). So... silly as this set is, it's what hooked me!"

Yup, this and three others were cereal box sets! Fun Fact: the images for these four sets were submitted by yours truly. I guess not a lot of 80's kids kept the instructions to their cereal-box UPC Lego sets...

@AllenSmith Taking Corn Flakes over Fruit Loops? You were quite the rare kid preferring those over the sugary stuff. Of course now that I'm a parent myself I understand. I don't recall eating sugary cereals to get these, but I do remember you're right, it was Kellogg's.

This set, and the other 3 related stunt sets, were the first Lego sets I ever had when i was 5 years old. I remember seeing them on cereal boxes and being so excited when I got them in the mail. This is what started it all for me....

I understand TLG has sold many 'stunt copters' to avoid military references. But, are stunt copters actually a thing in the real world?

At first I thought the design was overly familiar to a white version. So I just input the name and also got 6515 Stunt Copter, which was on my mind. The name's even the same, but it isn't quite a copy besides the tile rotors which I remembered.

There's also 1630-1 Sky Copter. Very imaginative.

Because of the comments I looked up the promotional sets. It"s fun to see that 1560 1561 1562 and 1563 are all color-coordinated.

I got 1560 and 1562. Was there a super model you could make with all four?

@Bornin1980something:
Sure. Who do you think does helicopter stunts for Hollywood?

Anyways, to give you a real example, there was a lifeguard named Eddie Aikau, who lost his life trying to save someone. He also surfed, and they created an ad hoc surf tournament in his honor. The critical thing is, they would only run the tournament when the waves were _huge_. About 25 years ago, they called his tournament, and surfers showed up from all over the world…except the waves were too big, and the surf was bottoming out. So they called off the tournament, and the USCG called Condition: Black, which means don’t go out on the water, and don’t expect the Coast Guard to come save you if you’re dumb enough to ignore them and go out anyways.

Well, some surfers decided to go out anyways. They found one area where the waves almost never broke because the water was too deep, but on that day it was just shallow enough for breakers. I mean, they had waves that reached 70’ from the bottom of the trough to the top of the wave crest, but they were breaking, which means you can surf them. Sort of. You have to get moving as fast as the wave, and nobody could paddle that fast, so they invented “tow-in surfing” that day, where a guy on a jet ski would use a waterski rope to tow you up to speed , and you’d let go and start surfing the wave of your life.

There just happened to be an IMAX film crew in Hawaii to shoot a big wave surfing documentary, and they hadn’t shot a single frame of film yet. On their last day, someone tipped them off about the tow-in surfers. They got aerial footage of surfers shot from below that day. The helicopter pilot flew in Vietnam, where you’d find a valley and hug the ground so you didn’t make an enticing target. Flying inside the wave trough apparently wasn’t a big deal for him.

I had this and 1562. I didn't eat enough Frosted Flakes to get the other two, but got pretty close to making 1560 out of spare parts.

Even though the bigger vehicles (planes, choppers, spaceships, whatever) were a lot of fun to build and were always on Christmas and Birthday list, I probably played with smaller sets like this ten times as often. They just fit into young hands so well and sparked a bit more imagination. Even today my ten-year-old admits the same thing... he still wants a giant jet liner like 60367 but most of his own creations are smaller builds.

Ahhh, sweet! This set came out in my dark ages, a few years after I entered them, but something prompted me at the time to send in for this set and its siblings in the Kelloggs promo; it’s not like I wasn’t already eating the cereal anyway. I therefore had this set and the other three (including a duplicate of 1563 Track Blaster) for many years as the only LEGO sets I (having disposed of my childhood sets in one of those decisions one regrets eternally), until I finally emerged from my dark ages and started getting LEGO in earnest again around 2002. These Stunt sets made for a modest collection for a while, but they were enough to be able to have fun with them.