This set is a great set to build and a good addition to any LEGO soccer stadium. This set comes with a few stickers which you need to put on. And you also have to put stickers on the minifigs, which is really annoying. The set itself doesn't have many play features, but it's very easy to manoeuvre it. The boot does open, and you can slide out a piece where you can put the minifigs on. We also get a soccer ball with this model. It's a great set to have and fun to play with for sure.

All in all, this set is a great set and I would recommend you to get this. You can find this set on eBay and BrickLink for sure. Here is the link where you can check out the full gallery I made for this set on my website: www.klokriecher.de


Videos I made of this set:

Stopmotion

Review

Speed Build

Evan though my one is missing two windows it`s still great. I was surpised to see how much it could do.

PROS.
comes with soccer ball,
easy to build,
players and goal keeper,
back door opens,
players slide can slide in and out of the bus with the door open,
nice pitchers in the instructions,
arm rests inside.

CONS.

noware to put soccer ball,
backdoor breaks easly,
bad pitcher at front of instuctions.

Over all suggest it to evey one evan if thier not into soccer.

Lego Sports was a bit of an odd line that Lego ran in the early 2000s and I never had much contact with it outside of my cousin owning the 3409 Championship Challenge, and some periphery contact with one of the Basketball sets. I picked this set up along with a big bulk lot of Lego Sports football sets, so I figured I'd let you know about it through one of my deep reviews.

This set is fundamentally the same as Blue Bus, Red Bus, Americas Bus, Team Transport Bus and Team Transport Bus Adidas Edition. The only things that change between the sets are the colours of bricks, stickers and the minifigures.

Building Experience

The bus is all brick built, going top to bottom. There's no use of any specialised chassis piece, or a giant Town Jr starter piece, it's all made up of plates, bricks, tiles and such which is really nice. The main body of the bus is using the large 1x4 train window panels, and the final result is a 6 stud wide bus (although it's more of a mini-bus at its current size), with a large sloped windshield and space for five football players and a driver. On top of the bus are some Lego megaphone/space blasters being used as bullhorns for the bus. There's also some kind of attempt at a roof-rack with the black 1x8 plates on the top. On the back, there's a ratcheted hinged door which allows you to open the back of the bus, which gives you partial access to the inside of the bus

I really like the way you get the players (and the driver) in and out of the bus - they're all attached to a long plate, which slides into the bus from the back, sliding on tiles so that there's no friction. It's like a long rack of people being pushed into the bus. Once they're inside, it creates the illusion of a row of players in seats and a driver at the wheel and it saves having to fiddle with a hinged roof and risk tearing apart the whole bus when you want to get the players out.

One thing I wish this bus had was some 2x4 panels, glass or bricks to close up those gaps near the front windshield. It looks a bit odd having it open like that, and doesn't add anything in terms of visual aesthetics. I'd rather have either black bricks here or some more trans-light blue glass. Another thing I wish it did have was an easier way to get the roof off, maybe with a combination of tiles and plates to make it easier to get access to the interior.

Parts

The big 6x2 trans-light blue windshield is nice, and you get two of them making for a really nice front for the bus. They're great pieces to have and useful. For wheels, you get a type of wheel I've never seen before in light grey, only in red, wheels with studs on the side. Also on offer are seven black window frames, with trans-light blue glass inside, an assortment of black and white plates in various sizes and shapes, some ratcheted hinges, tiles, and six minifigures. Overall, nice pieces to have but nothing really special.

Now this set has stickers, as do A LOT of the Sports line as these sets often had tie-ins with the World Cup, football teams from various countries, Adidas, etc. My set came with a sticker sheet but also had stickers attached to it. The instructions say to attach the stickers to the glass of the bus but I don't think the stickers add anything to this set, as they're mainly just stuck to the windows with little thought. It also stops you viewing the players easily, and limits the potential to use this bus for anything other than a football team bus.

The minifigures have plain white torsos, black legs and a variety of classic Lego faces like the default grin (always great to have), the grin with eyebrows, moustached smile and so on. Johnny Thunder's head makes an appearance here, as does Timmy's head from Time Cruisers. The torsos are left blank for you to apply stickers, usually a number on the back of the torso or something on the front.

There's also a minifigure with a green torso who seems to be either the captain or the coach of the team, but my set came with a number "1" sticker applied to him. However, he's also the one shown driving the bus. So apparently the number one player has to drive the bus as well as play football, pulling double duty. Tough gig but someone's got to get the team to the game.

Again, my set came with the stickers applied and they're held onto the torsos well after 20 years. They're a bit dirty and you can see where they'll probably start to peel in time. If you don't care about stickers and the like, I'd say apply them and see how you go. If you want a more permanent solution, Lego made printed football player torsos that might be a better fit if you want longevity. I'd also consider whether you want the stickers on the torsos, as it can limit future play and MOC potential.

Playability

The bus can move, turn and drive without any issues - no bowing, super loose parts or rattling. It's not too big in the hand, not too heavy or clunky so it's a really great Lego vehicle on those front and it scales well with other Lego vehicles from the time period. If you're using Lego System sets from the 1990s, I feel this fits right in with them.

I tested to see if this fits on a Lego road baseplate by using my old 32x32 dark grey road piece and the bus fits well inside a lane, with clearance either side. I'm unsure if this road baseplate is the same size as all the other road baseplates Lego has made throughout the years but I think those baseplates are all fairly standardised.

In terms of story potential for a kid, there's a lot here with the six minifigures and the ball. A bus full of people can have a lot of stories. Who are the people on the bus, where are they going? If you decide to play the story straight, they're the Soccer Black Team on their way to a game. But maybe they're running late? Take the story further still and you get more possibilities. Maybe the bus crashes and the players have to repair the bus? Maybe it breaks down outside a spooky mansion full of monsters? Does the bus get taken over by some crooks and the police have to rescue it? Maybe the bus can't slow down because Dennis Hopper has rigged it with explosives?

That's imagination though. If we're going just by what's here, piece and parts wise, I don't think the playability on the set is particularly great. The bus moves, as vehicles do, but there's no play functions, accessories (aside from the ball), no radio pieces or fans to interact with. I'm sure a kid could have a field day with a bus and six people but there's no a lot in the way of function here.

The bus does have some weak points in its construction, which can hamper playability somewhat. First, the door on the back of the bus can come off if you're not using the hinge at the top to open it as the 1x4 window on the back is only attached at the top. In my time playing with it and moving it around for the review, it didn't break off once but I could see how that would be an issue through extended play

Secondly, I wish the bus did have some storage for the soccer ball that comes with the set. They suggest putting it on the roof, but then it just rolls around all over the shop. You could put it inside the bus somehow but I feel like a storage box or locker on the underside of the bus could have been a nice little addition to the set, and would have added some realism in the sense that it could have been the bus's storage compartment for the players belongings.

Not sure how you could modify this bus to add seats, a functioning bus door, etc, but I'm sure an enterprising Lego fan could find a way.

Value for Money:

I got this set as part of a six set bulk lot for about $10 dollars, so I didn't break the bank for this one and I think that's an absolute steal for six minifigures and parts.

You get good value for money, what with the common, easily reusable parts, five minifigures and a nice bus. That being said, there's no rare pieces or hard to find minifigures here, or anything out of the ordinary. The stickered parts are hard to find, but depending on the condition of the stickers that can sometimes be a bit hard to judge the value of.

I don't think I'd pay more than $20 to $25 dollars for a set like this. I might pay $30 if it was in excellent to mint condition, and you could argue it's worth more due to its age, the type of set and the fact you get six minifigures, so it depends on your personal value you put on that kind of stuff. Bricklink currently (June 2020) has this going for $37 to over $100 Australian dollars, not including postage and the like.

This model of bus is the same as the other five variants so if you want to buy the pieces and do it that way, it shouldn't be hard as all the pieces are fairly common. You could part it out on Bricklink for relatively cheap I'd think.

Final Thoughts

This is a great little bus for play, a city layout or simply arranging with a Lego Sports display. It could be modified into something else and if none of that gets you, it's a good assortment of parts. If you need a pre-built Lego minibus or bus for whatever reason, this is a well made version of that. Side note, Lego also hasn't made an actual bus outside of City Bus from 2017, and this is the only one from the "classic" Lego System days. So this is a great set to buy for a city layout if you need a decent facsimile of a mini-bus or city bus and don't want to spend big.

That being said, it's really nothing special. It's just a bus taking some generic football players to the game, with no rare parts or special pieces so unless you have a need for it, or you need every soccer set, I think you can safely skip most of the Lego Sports transport buses.