Your Guide to Collecting LEGO Star Wars Sets imageThe little plastic snap-together blocks, LEGOs,, are among the most popular children s toys available, firing the imagination of both boys and girls. However, aside from pure, free-form inventiveness,...Read More about Your Guide to Collecting LEGO Star Wars SetsMy Parts: You need to be logged in to see your Set List. FREE Download: Available from PICSL These are the instructions for building the LEGO Model Team GIANT TRUCK that was released in 1996. Download These Instructions as PDF: BUILDING INSTR 5571 IN [16.21 Mb] View which pieces you need to build this set ) which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse this site5571 Giant Truck is a LEGO Model Team set released in 1996. It was, until recently, one of the biggest LEGO sets ever sold. $69.99 €69.99 £49.99 $119.99Additional prices: June 2011 (May 2011 in UK) 5771 Hillside House is a Creator set that was released in June of 2011. The set contains 714 pieces to construct a house, a blue car, a minifigure and a small, white, brick-built dog, with a leash around its neck.
The age recommendation for this set is ages 8 through 12.Moc ToyotaToyota Sr5Lego Toyota1983 ToyotaLego Back To The FutureLego My Son SFuture LegoThe BackFerrari Racing CarForwardThis Back to the Future LEGO Toyota 4×4 is AmazingNew Lego Technic Book Will Make You Want To Play With Legos Forever10/01/14 9:56pmLego's had a separate line just for the truly, irredeemably smitten gearhead for years, the Technic line. Where conventional Legos were defined by bricks, Technics went beyond mere masonry into the realm of engineering, and was full of moving gears and belts and pistons and other amazing stuff. Now there's a book crammed full of it. The book, Incredible Lego Technic: Cars, Trucks, Robots & More!, has lots of incredible Lego Technic cars to scrutinize and drool over and plan your own build around. This book looks like an ideal geek-out tool. Check out some of these stills, if that video wasn't enough. It's the details that get me, the clever repurposing of the parts, like forming the Shelby Cobra badge with those three little lego parts.
Share it!facebookgoogle+twitterpinterestredditLink To UsHave a website? Share this with your readers!/lego-set-reference/model-team/">Model Team LEGO Set Reference Inventories and InstructionsLatest Story:LEGO Polybag Set Collecting (LEGO) Recent Stories:Water Play - Diving - Part I (Extreme Sports) Water Play - Boats (Uncategorized) Our Most Valuable Kingdom Part II (Uncategorized) Mrs. Santa Claus (Holiday) Our Most Valuable Kingdom Part I (Uncategorized) Multi-Tasking Supreme - Juggling for Fun and Glory (The Arts) Unicorn: One Who Walks Alone (Legends and Myths) The World's Tallest Toys (The Arts) The Christmas Reindeer (Holiday)Published on Dec 7. Emma is going bowling with Matthew and can’t decide what shoes to wear. Finally, she gets to the bowling alley, only to realize she has to wear their plain, bland rental bowling shoes! But to Emma, plain and bland are never an option.In case you didn't read my last post about Lego (don't worry, this one has pictures!), I'm starting a new long-term project involving one of my absolute favoritest things (spoiler alert, it's Lego): Lego.
My plan is to reach deep into the annals of time (why are you giggling?) and pick one of the old-school sets from my childhood that I've always wanted to build. I'm then going to slowly, perhaps over the course of years, put that set together. The first step in the process, of course, is picking which set I'm going to be building. For me, picking a classic set was quick and there's no point belaboring it any further (but perhaps you'll allow me a bit of dramatic embellishment). Thinking back on all those catalogues I used to look at from the 90's, there was no theme I coveted more than Model Team. If you aren't familiar, basically once a year through the 90's, the Lego Group came out with a no-holds-barred, super detailed vehicle with no arbitrary scale or price constraints. They varied wildly in price, since there was apparently no specific guideline on how big they should be. Historically the price points for various themes and set sizes are pretty set-in-stone specific - you can be pretty sure that for any given theme you'll have a small set or two, a couple mediums, and generally one biggon' that would basically be all you got for Christmas that year.
You couldn't really be certain about Model Team, though - they ranged from $40 all the way up to $140. These were the cream of the crop. Back when a few bricks clumped around some wheels settled (albeit acceptably) for "car" these were beautifully detailed, sophisticated, and expertly crafted models consisting of hundreds of pieces. No one 90's product line stands out more than Model Team, and no Model Team set comes close to the one that dominated the back page of the 1996 Lego Shop at Home Catalog. This set marked the climax for Model Team in both number of pieces and price, and it definitely marked a high point in Lego history. Some might even call it the most unabashedly serious Lego set of all time. I'm talking, of course, about 5571: Giant Truck. Even the name was right to the point. With 1742 very specific parts, it's probably going to take me quite a while to get it finished, the perfect choice for my hot-rod-in-the-garage project. Other sets might have come out that were bigger, more complicated, or more detailed.
Other sets might have better, more sophisticated construction or have more features. Other sets might even be built using nothing but parts I already own. However, no other set comes close to Giant Truck in my heart. Giant Truck (also called "The Black Cat") was introduced by The Lego Group (TLG) in 1996. I'm pretty sure it was their attempt to see just what they could come up with given no restraint whatsoever. In the same year, TLG introduced some of the sets I most fondly remember playing with for years afterword - sets like 6335: Indy Transport, a set that saw countless hours of my attention, 6248: Volcano Island, a set that I'm literally looking at on my desk as I type this, 6331: Patriot Jet, 1821: Rally Racers, 8230: Coastal Copy Buggy, and 1728: Crystal Crawler, one of the best Aquazone sets. 1996 also saw the Exploriens, the key Lego space sub-theme from my childhood - 6982: Explorien Starship, 6899: Nebula Outpost, and 6856: Planetary Decoder saw a lot of adventures in my house.
Also released in 1996, of course, was Star Trek: First Contact, Super Mario 64, Duke Nukem 3D, and Richard D. James Album. The point is, it was a good year full of a lot of things I have spent a lot of hours with. However, I still stared at that catalog, dreaming of the one thing I knew I would never get. So first things first. The Lego group claims to host instructions for over 3300 Lego models dating back to 2002. That definitely doesn't include Giant Truck by about six years, but I searched for it anyway. Come on, though, they have to have Giant Truck. It's probably a matter of national pride in Denmark. I'm pretty sure it's on their flag. Anyway, before I really dive in, we might as well humor the possibility of just buying this thing. There are several places where you can buy old Lego sets. The first, probably most obvious, option is Ebay. I pulled up a quick search and immediately saw a brand new, never opened Giant Truck for - brace yourself - $1,325. In case you're wondering what sort of investment an unopened Lego model can be, that's a 946% return on the $140 investment that set would have been if you bought it new.
There's another brand new Giant Truck auction ending today with a current high bid of $890 - a relative steal! Obviously I'm not going to be buying one of those. Another source for old Lego stuff is called BrickLink. It even sports a design from the 90's! Don't let the general shady appearance of the place fool you - it's a fantastic resource. I can confirm that to some extent. I have made exactly one purchase from somebody on BrickLink (that's a bit of a spoiler for later on). Some trepidation for BrickLink wouldn't be unjustified, I think, but considering just how long it's been around (since 2000) and how many buyers and sellers they have (312,353 registered users), I'm guessing there are more good experiences than bad. You can certainly find any Lego or Lego accessory you might be looking for there, being sold by one or more of the (as noted on the site) 8,563 different stores. It works like Ebay, sort of, acting simply as a broker between Lego sellers and Lego buyers. As a result, I imagine, the quality is more in the court of the specific people you deal with rather than BrickLink itself.
There are extensive rating and problem handling tools, though, so like Ebay your reputation is on the line if you try to be a knucklehead. Everybody there is united in a common love of all things Lego, though, so there's already a heightened sense of community. The cheapest Giant Truck right now is $341. That's if you want one used, without a box, and shipped from the United Kingdom, which probably won't be cheap (if you're a dumb American like me). The cheapest one in the US is $600. Basically we're still looking at a prohibitive expense. The last real source for used or old Lego would require that you happen to be lucky enough to have an independent used toy store in your neck of the woods - preferably one that deals specifically in Lego. I just so happen to be lucky enough to have had that happen. Out in the rich-people part of town is a store called Bricks & Minifigs. It's a great store, and it would be the greatest thing ever if the Internet didn't exist. Their prices are, if you're careful, decent (though you'd only really buy new sets there if you're either insane or insanely rich), and they have an ever-changing assortment of used sets from various eras in their display case.
It seems to be, for whatever reason, the place to go if you need one of several specific Star Wars sets that they always seem to have several of. It's not the place to go if you're looking for a very specific and extremely high-priced set from the 90's. They do have at least one brand new 10197: Fire Brigade, one of the highest user-rated sets out there, which was discontinued a while ago. It's pretty expensive, as you might imagine. They don't, however, have Giant Truck, so don't even ask. Bricks and Minifigs does - in addition to making grammar awkward - have three huge bins of random parts that you can buy by the bucket- or bag-full. This might come in handy later if I need any specific, but not terribly rare, parts. I think it's safe to say I will be needing some parts at some point in this project. So then the question becomes one of logistics. What ground rules, if any, should I set down for how I acquire those parts that I don't yet have? I could be strict about where they come from - specifying that they have to be from a certain vintage or that I have to get them all out of actual sets.
However, I don't think I'm going to be that hard on myself. Just a cursory bit of checking parts lists online shows that Giant Truck needs like twenty of several parts that only appear at most in quantities of four in other sets. I'm not about to buy five copies of a Lego set from the 90's for a hundred bucks a pop just to have enough of, for example, these guys: It's clear then that Giant Truck is not even close to the ideal set for showcasing how easily you could make a particular set using parts out of a bunch of other ones. What Giant Truck might be perfect for, however, is trying out as many sources for parts as I can. Perhaps that will be the central thesis of this whole thing (other than "Giant Truck is awesome"). What method for sourcing particular pieces is the most fun, or the easiest, or the cheapest? I'll look for parts in my own collection, by buying both used and new sets, in those bulk bins at that store I'm super lucky to have in my town, ordering them online, or even digging through the vacuum - I'll leave no stone unturned in my quest for all 1,742 pieces of the Black Cat.