Random set of the day: Red Tiger
Posted by Huwbot,Today's random set is 2774 Red Tiger, released during 1999. It's one of 63 Town sets produced that year. It contains 141 pieces and 3 minifigs, and its retail price was US$15.
It's owned by 246 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you might find it for sale at BrickLink or eBay.
63 likes
32 comments on this article
Neat little stunt plane. I didn't know they ever made the mechanic's tools in gray!
Airline promo set!
It's just hard to muster up much love for juniorized sets. The fuel vehicle looks like something out of Classic Space, though. And I like the printed sloped brick on the repair stand and the minifigs. But the main build is poor.
It's a 'C' grade set.
An open cockpit on a jet? I mean, you don't need that for a plane to still fly, it's just a bit nuts is all. Are we sure this isn't part of the Extreme Team? The colors are all present.
@DavidBrick said:
" @guachi said:
"It's just hard to muster up much love for juniorized sets."
How is this juniorized!?"
maybe the large wings on the back, but I think that part was in other sets before.
@DavidBrick said:
"How is this juniorized!?"
Because it's a Town set from the late 90s and there weren't ever big or specialized pieces used ever for spaceships and pirate ships and castles ever before then and thus makes them superior in every way because that's when "real LEGO building" was at its pinnacle.
@MrBob:
The old tool sprue came in black in 51 sets, old dark grey in 49 sets, and once each in dark bley and dark purple.
@guachi said:
"It's just hard to muster up much love for juniorized sets."
Nah, this isn’t juniorised. It’s more the building style of 1996/97.
There were promo sets like this that were unique in that they didn’t adopt the ‘Town Jr.’ building style around that 1998-2000s era.
@DavidBrick said:
" @guachi said:
"It's just hard to muster up much love for juniorized sets."
How is this juniorized!?"
The open canopy and chunky appearance. It's not labeled "juniorised" in the database but this set was limited release. Juniorisation is really noticeable on ground vehicles with their printed slope pieces for the front grills/lights
Spotted: the rare red tiger. Only 246 have been verified to exist. It is an endangered tiger, especially in the comments.
I really like that helmet piece with the built-in oxygen mask. Did it come in any other sets?
The proportions of this jet are very weird though, its far too short and heavy looking. Basically short and fat to put it bluntly. Plus the open cockpit is odd. Has Lego ever made any Cold War style jets which look similar to a MiG 17, Sabre, Starfighter etc.?
I wouldnt say its a bad set though, its good to see some ground crew and associated vehicles included. Thesedays we would get just that little fuel buggy for the price of this whole set.
@MeisterDad:
Is this another case of inbreeding for specific genetic traits and then them off as a distinct species?
@chrisaw said:
" @guachi said:
"It's just hard to muster up much love for juniorized sets."
Nah, this isn’t juniorised. It’s more the building style of 1996/97.
There were promo sets like this that were unique in that they didn’t adopt the ‘Town Jr.’ building style around that 1998-2000s era."
1996 Town has a number of planes and you're right that this looks like it would fit right it. On first glance it has the ungainly chunkiness of Town Jr. but as you state, it actually isn't.
I kept skipping over Town sets for years because the appearance was just a bit off. By, say, 2008 City was at what I consider a high point with vehicles that universally looked good.
Great scan for the set image, very crisp
The red tiger is clearly the name given to the refueling cart
Cons: a bad looking small set.
Pros: cool tiger stickers, headlight bricks to hook up fuel and diagnostic thingy, and a nice pilot helmet. Also why is the mechanic wildly waving a screwdriver at the passing plane? Did he forget to tighten something or is he just insane?
@gorf43 :
He’s clearly about to oil it so it won’t squeak.
@Brickchap said:
"I really like that helmet piece with the built-in oxygen mask. Did it come in any other sets? "
Actually not many:
https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemIn.asp?P=x168&in=S
Don't remember this one, but I'm loving the colors and little side tanker-cart!
I'm picturing the F.A.A. or Transport Canada looking at this, and saying: "...Ummm...No...", but what do I know, I have 10764 and...like the planes, just hate the 'open cockpit' designs....
Also, it kinda' funny: I'm working on a MOC plane (sorta'), and used a similar style for angling the tail/fins...except mine are the biiiig fins, like off a passenger jet...as well, this design would have benefitted from slopes in front of the tippers (on the black plating).
A quick squiz through the rest of 1999's town range makes me really glad that it's 2021.
I can’t believe that no one’s mentioned that the plane is on the ground and the ground crew is in the sky. Last time I checked it’s the planes that do the flying, although I admit I haven’t flown since Covid so maybe I’m just remembering it wrong.
So, it’s a flying... tiger?
When exactly did LEGO stop giving products military names?
@Brickchap said:
"I really like that helmet piece with the built-in oxygen mask. Did it come in any other sets?
"
Quite a few. It crops up a lot in the Exploriens theme as their default helmet, and is worn by one of the characters in Rock Raiders in a number of sets. Not sure how often appears outside of the sets of my childhood though XD
If it wasn't for the airshow stickers on the tail wing I would have guessed that this was some secret military high altitude spy plane from the 80's, with the open cockpit so that the pilot could take photos! I have the modern version 60177, where they have removed all excess bulky bricks and now looks more like an airshow plane, just made the mistake of not buying a formation of them.
@alfred_the_buttler:
He’s trying to jump on the tiger’s back, to see if the old proverb is accurate.
@MrBob said:
"Neat little stunt plane. I didn't know they ever made the mechanic's tools in gray!"
That used to be the more common colour, actually! They mostly used grey through the 90s and early 2000s, black was a rare sight.
The part(s) never quite made the jump to new dark grey though, only being used in an educational set and a small Star Wars set (7251) in 2005. Since then, black has been dominant. I guess Lego preferred only making a single colour, and this was the chance to switch.
Though it did get a recolour to purple, of all things, in a Friends set, 3933.
@PurpleDave Probably the result of the aftermath of 2855.
Fun fact: this plane has a tiny removable engine. You can take it out by removing the red section with the arrow on it. Hence the arrow.
I have to concur with the majority of the comments: this set is NOT juniorized. Its design isn't super realistic, but it already has more than enough parts to make it a standard set. It's indeed more along the line of Res-Q and Extreme Team in terms of complexity.
Seriously, Juniorization is not a catch-all term for sets that look kid-ish. It's for a phenomenon that started in the Town Junior subtheme in 1997 where large specialized parts were introduced specifically so that young children would be quicker in building the sets. At the time Lego was losing sales due to factors such as the rise of electronic toys. So they thought that if they made the builds easier kids would be less bored of having to build the sets first before playing with it.
So they made large, single-purpose shortcut parts specifically to drastically decrease the build time.
This phenomenon resulted in a time where lego started to crank out an unsustainable amount of new, specialized parts until they changed their strategy in 2004 after narrowly avoiding bankrupcy.
The time after that Lego scaled back the use of such parts. Yes, there would continue to be specialized parts. There were also specialized parts before that: even in the 70s lego had specialized parts. Even single-purpose ones like boat hulls were common from an early time.
And yes, some sets are less detailed or visually coherent.
That does not make them Juniorized.
@Rob42:
Oh, wow, there’s an instance where Bricklink’s catalog conventions fall short. I feel like I’ve even run into this specific one before, but they don’t list the full sprue for 7251. Most of the tools are inventoried to the medical droid, but the oil can is attached to the set. Since the tools are split between them, there’s nowhere to assign the full sprue. If the droid weren’t classified as a minifig, that wouldn’t be an issue, because they can have non-minifig assemblies linked both as a construction and as loose parts simultaneously, but the minifig catalog system doesn’t allow this.
Yep, that caught me out at first as well; I knew I have some bley tools, but only that educational set was showing up. I ended up searching via one of the tools because I thought I was going crazy. (Bonus 7251 fun fact I just noticed: The box art shows a hair piece that is not actually in the set.)
Bricklink's "Counterparts" system could help with cases like this, but for some reason they explicitly exclude parts on sprues from that.
@Rob42:
If you actually compare the “Known Colors” between the sprue and some of the tools, the numbers are almost identical. I checked the oil can and it picks up two dark bley from that SW set and the VIP Gala repack of the same. It also picks up one more black instance, but I’m not going to dig through to find it. If you check the dark purple listing, it gives you that same Friends set because the six tools are inventoried to the full sprue. It’s the inclusion of the medical droid and the fact that it only uses five tools that screws things up for dark bley. Minifigs are excluded from the counterpart and alternate inventory systems, so there’s no way to shoehorn the sprue into that set inventory. If the droid also used the oil can, the sprue could be inventories to the droid. If all the tools ended up on a tool rack for the droid to pick up as accessories, the sprue could be inventoried to the set. But you can’t inventory 5/6 to the droid and 1/6 to the scenery.