Wednesday 14 December 2011

#713 of Year 2 Lego 7035 World City Police HQ

The Lego City theme has gone through quite a bit of transformation over its branding in the past 30 years that I've been collecting.  Back when I started drooling at collecting, there was only one minifig theme so they didn't bother to label it anything.  When they added the Space theme in the late 70s, the non-Space theme had to be differiented somehow so at the early 80s, Lego decided to call it 'Town'.  In the 90s, they took a disasterous step by 'juniorising' all their sets with ugly designs and easy builds. When they realised what a mistake that was, they brought back the Town theme, but renamed it World City instead.  World City was less juniorised than 'Junior', but the designs were still a mishmash of 'Junior' and the normal sleek look.  Perhaps because of how blocky World City was, they renamed it to City in the noughties (ha!) and moved the design to larger vehicles and better looking models.

The World City logo on the box gives away the age of this box - it's from the 90s.  The box looks like a less refined version of the City box with the blue strip.  The background images are gorgeous though.  The back of the box has alternate models and World City would be the last time this would be done as the City theme moved towards a more action figure approach by showing the action features of the set on the back of the box.


The top also introduced something that was carried into City - pictures of mifigures to scale (hence the 1:1, which is just Lego talk for to scale).


The box contained 8 unnumbered baggies (note that numbered baggies are a 'City' thing), the instructions booklet, a decal sheet and a baseplate.


The instructions shows off some nice trains sets on the back that I wish I got way back then.  Alas!


There are four figures in the set - three cops and a crook.


The set also contains two vac metal 'gold' bars.  Whoa!  Shiny!


The build wasn't too difficult.  The pieces aren't too blocky, but the design was a bit convoluted and the instructions could have been better with the breakdown of the steps.  Still, nothing that I couldn't handle.  The City instructions are a lot better and this shows how far Lego has gone.


The finished product actually looks good.  I like the tower, not so much the jail cell.  There is only one garage space though or is that actually a gate?  It's a bit out of character for the City Police stuff, but it forms a nice bridge between the green and black of the Town Police sets to the blue and white of the City Police sets.

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