Vintage set of the week: Windmill
Posted by Huwbot,This week's vintage set is 550 Windmill, released during 1976. It's one of 28 LEGOLAND sets produced that year. It contains 210 pieces.
It's owned by 157 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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Pretty cramped working conditions
One of the best uses of that fence piece ever.
Also particularly fond of the wheelbarrow joined at the hip.
IIRC the first set designed by yellow Castle's designer Daniel August (Krentz or Krantz? what is the correct spelling?) He was the first foreign designer recruited.
Pretty sure this was my first set, or at least the oldest set in my collection. The figure still fascinates me as the evolutionary "missing link" to the modern minifig
@MeisterDad: I like the fact that the wheelbarrow,wheel is still used in today's wheelbarrows,and totally with you on the NPU with the fences..
US version of 362-1 which was released the previous year.
I added the 362 version to my collection earlier this year. While totally unrealistic, the 1970's Legoland buildings certainly had their own aesthetic which I personally find very charming in it's simplicity.
@MeisterDad said:
"One of the best uses of that fence piece ever.
Also particularly fond of the wheelbarrow joined at the hip."
It was a tough life being a mid 1970's minifig - at risk of having stretchers or wheel barrows surgically inserted. And if you wanted to sit down you had to disembowel yourself.
Got this new when I was about seven or eight years old. It got disassembled a year or so later when the modern minifigures came out and I raided every pre/non-minifig set for parts to add to my little town. I recently rebuilt this set for the first time in more than 40 years, and it definitely has an undeniable charm. There's something about the proportions of the windmill and its base that just works.
I see the truck has a few bottles of blue milk on the back.
I didn't have the set, but I always liked it.
Never realised that the fence piece was that old, dating back to 1967. I always thought that it appeared some time in mid-1980’s
We are due for a new windmill set. I know there was a recent set through the Bricklink Designer Program but that was a brief flash of availability.
I wouldn't say no to a modern update, or a UCS farm set in general.
I guess the closest thing to a remake of this would be the windmill in the Mill Village Raid. Then the windmill in the C model of the Creator Medieval Castle. Then the Vestas wind turbine. Then the re-released Vestas wind turbine.
Nah, not the Vestas.
@myth:
I didn't find out until years later that there were more pieces for this fence system. This, and the offset 1x4x1 fence were the only two pieces my brother and I ever got, but there was a really long strip of this style fence that was suspended over train tracks to mount signal lights to, and a hinged gate.
I love this, looks exactly like the windmill next to our house.
Oh, nice part usage with the fences as fan vanes. Did Lego ever do something similar using them as wings?
@Brickalili: I don't know for sure, but I doubt it, for the same reason that real-life airplane wings look very different from windmill vanes.
This beloved windmill was one of my first sets! I still have it in the original box. It’s one of my treasures.
@taalrob said:
"I love this, looks exactly like the windmill next to our house."
Another Dutchman here that lives pretty close to a windmill, but that one looks nothing like this: https://www.molendatabase.nl/nederland/molen.php?nummer=577
For starters, it's not blue :-)
But cool set, and gotta love the variety of alternate builds: Is it a boat? Is it a bus? Is it a plane? No, it's a windmill!
@MCLegoboy said:
"Pretty cramped working conditions"
Stacks of room for a little mouse with clogs on....
@Norikins said:
"IIRC the first set designed by yellow Castle's designer Daniel August (Krentz or Krantz? what is the correct spelling?) He was the first foreign designer recruited."
Indeed: https://brickset.com/sets/designer-Daniel-August-Krentz
It looks great for its time! I love the slanted base. Just like some real windmills! And as said before, the fences are a great NPU!
The colors are a bit toyetic, but it's alright. It was a toy, and it undeniably has more charm than a brown black and grey model ever would!
This set is really charming. Those fences were mounted sideways on 7191, although that was over 20 years ago now.
You're right, ours is red but pretty simulair. https://www.molendatabase.nl/nederland/molen.php?nummer=1072
One of my favorites! Three years ago I found a bag of bricks at the local thrift for €4,50. Looking up the white dotted baseplate on Bricklink revealed this set! All the bricks but one (a black slope) were in the bag. Such a fun little built. I thought the type of windmill (The millhouse turning at the base on top of a pyramid) was perhaps typical for Denmark but found out it's common in many European countries, including my own, and is in fact the earliest type of mill. It's called the "Standerdmolen" (standard mill) in Dutch, in English a Post Mill, in Danish it's a "Stubmølle" or in French "Moulin au Pivot". The oldest surviving ones are about 500 years old, wow!
@TheOtherMike said:
" @Brickalili: I don't know for sure, but I doubt it, for the same reason that real-life airplane wings look very different from windmill vanes."
I was thinking more organic than mechanical wings. More dragon than aeroplane. We have all these membrane pieces these days (cheers Ninjago!) but back in the old school days would these have sufficed to look a bit more textured?
This was one of my very first Lego sets. I still have most of the pieces. Unfortunately, using it to build spaceships that crashed in the backyard resulted in some losses. What I have left is assembled and in my bookcase.
Guy on Left: "Would you hurry up...we got a milk delivery for the Owen's residence; something about his nephew..."Luck" I think..."
Guy on Right: "I...think...I'm impaled..."
Things just weren't safe in that era: motorcycles, scooters, wheelbarrows; all required 'impalement'. And even just to 'sit down' requires to 'break' oneself IN HALF...someone should do a diorama of one of these figures 'sitting' in a chair, surrounded by minifig sitting on the floor; and call it: "When I was your age...":)
@brick_r said:
"Things just weren't safe in that era: motorcycles, scooters, wheelbarrows; all required 'impalement'. And even just to 'sit down' requires to 'break' oneself IN HALF...someone should do a diorama of one of these figures 'sitting' in a chair, surrounded by minifig sitting on the floor; and call it: "When I was your age...":) "
Nah, people were just a bit tougher in those days, they could handle such small inconveniences. It's just a flesh wound!
@WizardOfOss said:
" @brick_r said:
"Things just weren't safe in that era: motorcycles, scooters, wheelbarrows; all required 'impalement'. And even just to 'sit down' requires to 'break' oneself IN HALF...someone should do a diorama of one of these figures 'sitting' in a chair, surrounded by minifig sitting on the floor; and call it: "When I was your age...":) "
Nah, people were just a bit tougher in those days, they could handle such small inconveniences. It's just a flesh wound!"
‘Tis but a scratch.
On the topic of those fences, they are a very odd thickness. I found that it, combined with the thin side of a bracket plate is (close enough to) a half-brick width. I have been scouting for half-brick widths, and this is one of the few I could find. Technic beams have annoying round sides.
@MeisterDad said:
"‘Tis but a scratch."
I've had worse.
@WizardOfOss said:
" @MeisterDad said:
"‘Tis but a scratch."
I've had worse."
Monty Python and the Holy Grail FTW!
@rslotb:
Bracket walls are 20% the width of a brick, and I was thinking when I laid two of these fence pieces top-to-bottom that the vertical was as thick as the flange sticks out, meaning they’d combine to about 53%. I just checked it in LDraw, and it looks like the fence lattice is thinner than I remembered (or childhood me didn’t appreciate precision measurements as much), because the geometry is spot on according to what I’m looking at.
@Murdoch17 said:
"Monty Python and the Holy Grail FTW!"
Win? Nah, we'll call it a draw.