Blacktron 260

I was looking at a Facebook post by Blacktron War and smacked my head... 260... I always do an Idea Book 260 post after wrapping up each theme and Blacktron's the last one to do... and guess what.

That's right, you got me... I totally forgot about it.  Here's a Space train from the Space Police page... there was some... ahem, arrested development in the doing of things for a while and I got off pattern.
I feel great though, how're y'all.

And Here, we, GO!

Wait, wait, wait... Those aren't really Blacktron!

I mean... but they are, kinda?  Blacktron got weird for 260... unlike the other 3 themes the book didn't make any attempt to keep these designs on pattern with the produced sets and instead added whites, transparent blues... and then drastically reduced the yellow and nearly erased the existence of transparent yellow.

The color decision aside, I really like the big Blacktron Trike, and the 260 idea instruction  model behind it is also small and attractive... it could've paired well with, or instead of, Meteor Monitor as a Blacktron 1.5 multipack release model between the original Blacktron and Blacktron: Next Generation; which did use white as a main color.

But then we have that toothy robot, and the little black robot.  (See that Small Robot on a black bottom Rocket stage... non Blacktron parts... at the time the best source for 3 of those parts would have been Classic Space: Polaris One Spacelab)  The robots look fun, if off color, and maybe the designs are better than what could have been done on theme... it could also be that the yellow and black would have been hard for kids to see and were thusly and rightly set aside in favor of achievable copying.

The only reason I like the tower is because I'm partial to some of the parts used on it, like a lot of them.

As for the spaceships... the triple tri-force ship is mediocre looking and my few attempts at it have been abandoned.  the rear spaceship seems like a halfway decent vehicle, but seems kinda stuck; not sure if it's Futuron or something else... and neither have Blacktron men...

Point is, Blacktron's representation in this book is slapped in there without any concern for the source material... and some of the times it works out.

The Idea Book build reappears here among the color faithful M:Tron vehicles... They seem to be on friendly terms... kinda sorta.

But of course with Blacktron, they'll spy on you even if you are their 'friends'.

The build for The Blacktron Speeder is simple and sweet... of all the Blacktron things they could have had us build this is the coolest looking one among the options.



The Model features 11 obvious white Futuron parts.  I think there was a shape they wanted to go for, and with no available yellow parts to do it, they switched over to white and didn't look back, or try a different design.  Who knows what might've been?
















To Build it from the existing sets I suggest getting
1 Strategic Pursuer... wha! This is not Blacktron?

1 Invader... I made it big because Blacktron rules.

1 Space Patroller, and this is not Blacktron.

1 Interplanetary Rover... How dare... also not Blacktron.

"It's cute and bug eyed... like a tree frog with no legs... Fancy some rockets little treefrog?"  To be serious, this is the one Blacktron model in the book to use trans yellow... these are exclusive to Invader and very nice.  I might be slightly biased about how nice they are because they are a rarity.  What's with the frog?

Our most Serious assessment continues: It's the smallest Model of Blacktron to feature the trident nose, and the arrows seem to indicate a feature is present.

"That feature is rotating froggy eye..." they don't clear enough room for a door, and the ground gets in the way of what could be construed as the 'view'.  On a more serious note.  They look like blaster cannons on doors that don't actually give enough room for ingress/egress.  It's totally a Lamborghini!

Propulsion appears to be via that black console brick... quite an odd choice, I don't think I've seen that method used elsewhere.  "Maybe it hops in short bursts, as legless tree frogs do."

"Great plagues of Bison, that's a lot of frogs! Hey, dudes, we got a frogidemic erupting in our seriously cool Blacktron post about us."

"The froggy eyes can look around independently... more like a chameleon..." but then again... they may actually just be dangerous laser cannons for ripping apart air molecules on unsuspecting moons.  

"Of course this sweet lil treefrog is actually a real treefrog and really, they aren't legless at all... Did you know, that Frog legs are leg-"

"Oi, that Futuron dweeb's ruining the awesomeness-iss-nes... we're a serious dangerous organization... and he's comparing us to... Base, come in... we got a problem of serious coolness de-Nile!"

All in all, a fine little model from 260. 

In my scholarly Blacktron dood self's personal-est opinion... this is the most wickedly neat instruction option for all of 260 Space.  I do wish they'd made our idea bigger though.  

"It's soo cute and tiny and adorable.  

So cute like a tree frog, oh yes you are."            

"Sic em dudes and dudettes, , we'll not let this fiendish effrontery sully our amazing badassedness-nes-nes... oi, a mouthful... Get them!!!"

"Anyways, it's cool, we got the little bug zappers and put em back in their place.  All's well that ends dastardly-ish."

And then it hits us like a danish brick; We Blacktron didn't get a spread of our own in 260!

Blacktron is the most mature-est and pretentious-est of the 4 awesome-est Space themes.  

*The sets may not have done super amazing because parents don't like cool bad guys, and so as not to disappoint too many kids with a 260 book in their hands the primary elements from Invader were maybe only made prominent since they accidentally made soo many of our wonderful spaceship.  The existence of Renegade (U.S. exclusive), and Message Intercept Base were neglected... pheh!  Battrax got some small parts representation on that trike, oh yeah!  And who knows if Alienator mattered in the overall scheme, it likely didn't, we apparently alienated too many concerned mothers.  But it was for a good... er... badass cause.  

*Futuron of My Youth makes no promises that any of this hearsay has any bearing on reality.

Our cause is coolness!

But in the long term... We kids liked Blacktron soo much...

We still talk about it in vast corners of the netisphere!

That's it from me... I'll be back with Blacktron's brick contributions in a few weeks. 

Sincerely, The Cure-all Pill

Futuron 260 and etc.

When I went to college one of my very first actions after class was to open up an obscure little website called Lugnet and peruse every Lego Space set ever made. 

The Lego company had accidentally printed the lugnet website domain in one of the Mania Magazine comics, and I took note of its presence when Lego issued a statement in the back stating that Lugnet was not officially recognized or endorsed by the company...(see kids, it pays to read the fine print.)

Note the Computer

Following issue

And accompanying legalese...this is what led me to Lugnet, and the AFOL community.

For many years prior to Lugnet and the Internet at large I had subsisted on fanciful visions of what Lego Space could be from scraps of instructions and random brochures.  I never threw out anything I didn't have a copy of somewhere else, so when my 4 year old brother shredded my ancient 1988 catalog I kept it...except for the part he ate...

Exhibit A

Beautiful aren't they?  Even Classic Space was getting in on the Futuron color scheme.  I was carrying around old Lego brochures on car rides through High School. Eventually the Internet made their daily use obsolete; so now I just keep them for nostalgia value.

Before I received that pamphlet the Lego Idea book 260 was, in particular, my go to guide for Golden era Space sets through much of the 90s and early 2000s.  I conjectured about getting the sets some day but didn't really have a solution for the how of it all.  Ebay was just starting and Bricklink wasn't a thing, and I didn't know anything about either of them.  

Due to the obscurity of information for all things old the 260 Idea book was a childhood favorite of mine.  I received it from my best friend for a birthday in the distant yester-years.  There were many things hidden away in the book like Pirates, Town, Basic, Castle, Space. All the usual themes.  Given the era I was born in these are still 'the' themes that come to mind when Lego is mentioned.  Wild West, Time Cruisers and Aquazone felt like wild departures, but they were only what seemed to me to be the beginnings of a new wave of ideas from the Lego company.  Pirates was new at the time I got into Lego, but I wouldn't discover that reality until much later.

So for many years this was the source for what I knew about the Futuron theme, the Black-tron theme, and the Space Police theme.  M-tron was during my time; I loved M-tron and knew all the set names; but that was as far back as my paltry knowledge really went.

Futuron managed to hold out through M-tron's 1990 arrival via a constant three year stream of new sets, and a persistent presence of 6990.  I think part of Futuron's appeal is just the sheer size and diversity of the theme.  Black-Tron only had six sets, as did Space Police, and M-tron only managed eight.  None of that is obvious in the 260 idea book.

The undiluted Futuron aesthetic in 260 inspired me in the absence of the real thing.  I cannot begin to count the number of iterations of that front buggy I made in my youth.  I just loved the concept of a suspension no matter how basic it was.  I'm pretty sure I even built the Radar buggy at least once.

The back truck's SNOT design mystified me until recently when my grown up self had an aha! moment and assembled this blue version two or so months ago.  I had always just assumed the section below the driver's arm was one piece, and it was only when I realized what specific parts were used that I could finally complete the design in my head.  (Read: I realized no such mystery piece exists!)  Eventually I want to build the true color scheme.

Here's a spaceship that seems kind of like a flying saucer.  The downward pointing engines and lack of wings were intriguing in a time when the sets themselves sported consistently straightforward construction techniques.  SNOT (Studs Not On Top) wasn't really talked about back in those days.

Within the Space section lay some wonderful ideas that would inspire a generation of Space Lego enthusiasts...some of us anyway. Looking back on it now I can see that the models don't hold too much appeal for crazy skilled builders, but for casual enthusiasts, and archivists, this is a classic tome.

Below you can see a bustling Futuron spaceport with a base, news anchor, trucks, spaceships, and the radar tower from the front spread.  This was, aside from 6990, everything I knew about Futuron for much of my childhood; with the aforementioned old catalog filling in some information for me in late junior high.

Oh yeah, and instructions.  This is the Space sections largest alternate, though compared to some of the other sections, like Castle and Pirates it seems small.

Hey, wait a minute, who put those sticker borders there???!

RAWR!... sadly, that was probably my fault.

This Base is unfortunately obscured, but there's enough visible structure that the imagination can go wild with it.

Some Spacecraft, Radar, and a Space police Guy...but you know, a Black Futuron Spaceman doesn't appear in this book.  Interestingly, they use more Futuron red spacemen than were actually released in sets, giving a false sense of their presence in the product line.

News Anchor...in case you doubted me.  You can see some M-Tron bits and even a few Classic Space pieces in this image.  

But let's get back to those instructions.  

You'll need three pieces that aren't in any of the Futuron sets.  

2 of these in black from Space Police.

1 of these hinges in black: This is a tricky piece, from the era in question your best bet is the last Classic Space Station Polaris 1 Spacelab, otherwise go for the '93 set Ice-Sat V.  

Other than that, Futuron can supply all the parts.

If you have 6990 you practically have 75% of the model already...subtle advertising much???

Well I should hope we've got most of the model from the flagship set.  Okay, here we go.

After the three Black parts listed further up you can see we've got a pile from Monorail Transport System, three bits from Strategic Pursuer, four parts and a Blue spaceman from Orion II Hyperspace, four parts from Star Defender 200, one slope and two dots from Laser Ranger, and two window frames with the Red Spaceman from Cosmic Laser Launcher.  In this way the Lego designers spread the part selection out to encourage kids to buy more sets.  From this we can determine that Marketing has never been a parent's best friend.

Here is the Inventory
1

4

4

1

1

1

2

1

1

1

1

2

2


1

1

1

1

2

1

4

4

4

4

4

2

1

2

1

2

2

1

2

2

1

1

1

1

2

2

1

1

1

1


On the positive side, this model uses lots of common parts, so Bricklinking it won't break the bank.

And here we have the finished product, a small rocket ship on a launch pad.  I've always liked this design, but I never thought I would ever build it...until it occurred to me recently that all the roadblocks were gone.  

It's actually kind of nice, I'd say it's more attractive than half the Futuron line.

And that closes this post, but we haven't seen the last of this mythic archive.