Random set of the day: Field Expander
Posted by Huwbot,Today's random set is 3410 Field Expander, released in 2000. It's one of 16 Sports sets produced that year. It contains 53 pieces and 4 minifigs, and its retail price was US$15.
It's owned by 389 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you might find it for sale at BrickLink or eBay.
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I always thought Lego City was overdue for a lovely big soccer stadium, and I thought these sports lines of the early 00s were a really great idea.
Soccer came up with some many useless and innovative pieces. Great series.
Green 11: And this is our captain, ZIDaNe. The whole team depends on him.
Green 4: Guys did you see that kick Red 4 just made? AWESOME!
Red 11: Wow, talk about advantage. Shouldn't he be playing, like, basketball or something? I mean, look at him!
Green 4: Guys! Guys? Why are you staring at nowhere? Help me build the field!
I miss the soccer and basketball lines so much. They were so innovative and fun. I’d take more experimentation like this any day rather than yet another freaking fire engine every single goddamn year.
I spent a long time figuring out how this would expand my 3409-1 field based on the box art. Turns out it's meant as a suggestion for exploring custom fields, and it is somewhat possible to expand the stock setup using a single copy of this set, by 8 studs lengthwise with the slope elements on either side.
At least it's not Clickets, and not upside-down Zidane
It seems to me that if you have the stadium, you wouldn't need to expand. It's big enough as it is.
That random choice certainly came out of left field...
The sports sets were definitely an innovative concept, but from my perspective I always felt like one of their considerable drawbacks was the pace of the play experience. Unlike, say, a foosball table, it lacked any sense of fast-paced intensity or need for quick reflexes and decision making. The recessed portions surrounding each player in the basketball and soccer/football sets gave you as much time as you needed to line up each shot, which diminished the challenge and chance factors that might have kept matches from feeling slow and repetitive.
In some respects, the play experience in these sets almost more closely resembled the feeling of a game of golf than a game of soccer/football or basketball. I'm glad that many of the recent Friends sets with an emphasis on sports or athletics rely less heavily on specialized elements, and focus more on role-play than feebly attempting to recreate the competitive play experience of the sports in question.
Of course, LEGO did manage to keep the Sports theme going through 2006, which is a lot more than can be said for some of their other turn-of-the-century innovations which burned out a lot more quickly. And some of the seemingly specialized elements from the Sports theme saw surprisingly innovative uses in other themes, like the use of the spring-loaded minifigure stands as a boulder launching mechanism in Knights' Kingdom II, or as the launching mechanisms for multi-shot flick missiles in the Dino Attack, Vikings, and Fantasy Era Castle sets!
I had 2 sets from this theme, the main soccer field and the zidane shootout set where the clear plastic case also could act as an extra goal or carry case.
My version came with extra orange torso figures for my country as a bonus, which is probably why I got it in 2000, because the European Championship was in my country.
Only downside is that the figures used can't stand on studs anymore, I suppose the stands they use for the shooting balls/play is slightly stretching a figure's feet after years.
The main manual did show how to make training fields, or combine 2 sets in different ways to get a 4-player or just larger field.
The theme overall was very cool idea and I can see why they remade the stadium sets later on with a stronger goal, because the 1st version of the goal was brick built and pretty weak in sturdyness.
I've always viewed these sets as neat; but I never got any. I suppose it would not sell well today, seeing how kids are so into smartphones and other gadgets . But then again, we now have Star Wars sets that are set up like a game using missile shooters to hit targets that break up on impact.
I've got a couple of these, the football sets from that year were brilliant.