Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Blacktron II

The next set of LEGO villains were actually just Blacktron again; although they'd been revised and reskinned. Now they looked less sinister, and frankly much less villainous, which of course made them also more boring. To attempt to counter that, they came with a few nifty design cues; the globular cockpit was always a great idea, for example. For whatever reason, the line had a lot of sets in it, but many of them were very, very small. Most likely, a good number of them were originally sold in those little bags.

Anyway, let's get to it. The 1462 Galactic Scout was a great example of a generic tiny ship, while the 6812 Grid Trekker was a tiny land vehicle, most notable for having at least given the little Blacktron astronaut a jetpack to fly around with.
Slightly larger, yet still small, spaceships included 1479 2-Pilot Craft, 1887 Scout Patrol Ship, and 6832 Super Nova II. 6851, the Tri-Wheeled Tyrax was also a tiny little land vehicle.
Blacktron II also revisted some Blacktron I themes, like 6878 Sub Orbital Guardian, which was another walker type vehicle, and 6933, the Spectral Starguider, which was not unlike the Battrax vehicle. The 6887 Allied Avenger and 6981 Aerial Intruder are medium sized spaceships that feature the globe cockpit. Like Blacktron I, there is no really large spaceship.
In fact, the spaceship that came with 6988 Alpha Centauri Outpost was nearly as big as the Aerial Intruder on it's own, and the base was very similar to the Message Intercept Base from Blacktron I.
While not a set per se, there used to be a value pack where you could get three sets together, and they had instructions on how to build a vehicle using parts from all three sets. This 4741 Super Vehicle was a nifty gimmick, but not a very cool design in its own right. The elongated globe cockpit is perhaps its most memorable feature.

As before, here's a handful of home made Blacktron 2 constructions. The really massive spaceship is... well, it's really massive. And really cool. I still have no idea how he got that curved surface. The small flying saucer is a "reskin" it's actually a Spyrius design remade in Blacktron II colors. We'll get to Spyrius next, as they're the next major bad guy syndicate to come on the scene when Blacktron II were finally phased out.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Great review, thank you for this. I used to have Aerial Intruder set along with Ice Planet: Deep Freeze Defender. Such a great memories i have playing with it. Those endless battles... Have you tried to build that giant robot from Intruder set? I did it nicely many times, i think now I could build it just form memory, without any guide. For me, Lego was and still is the greatest and most creative way to develop child's mind. Now days I work as creative designer in desktop publishing studio in Slovakia. kovac.juraj@hotmail.com