All Sorted Ep 42: LEGO Arctic
|On a frozen episode of All Sorted Jeff and James:
Welcome you all to the frozen north:
Get Technical:
- Technic: Arctic (1986)
- 4 Sets.
- First sets to include Technic Figures.
Check our facts:
- Canada consumes more macaroni and cheese than any other nation on earth.
- Basketball was invented by a Canadian.
- Wood Buffalo National Park in Alberta and the Northwest Territories is bigger than Denmark and Switzerland.
- Canada has more lakes than the rest of the earth combined.
Return to the land of ice and snow:
- Town: Arctic (2000)
- 8 sets (though two of these are the same set released in a box, and a polybag without the sticker sheet). – Snow Scooter – BOX, Snow Scooter POLYBAG
- 6575: Polar Base
- 6579: Ice Surfer
- 1523: Arctic Pen Series 2
Get inventive:
- The Greatest Canadian Invention (as voted in 2007)
Take one last trip above the arctic circle:
Finally, we ask:
- Should LEGO return to the north faster this time?
- Should Canadians not worry about what the rest of the world thinks of us?
Let us know – please leave a comment, or hit Jeff up on twitter, he’s @StillSorting.
And if you haven’t already, go check out the Arctic Winter Games (especially the Arctic Sports and Dene Games)!
2 Comments
I’ll listen to this when I get home from work – but as someone who lives in the coldest part of Australia (Tasmania) and the official Gateway to Antarctica (in competition with New Zealand and Chile), why have they never made an Antarctic set? My kids actually thought these were Antarctic sets as the logo looks more like a map of Antarctica than the Arctic – to which I countered with the observation that it is on top of the globe as is traditionally associated with the north, and that the arctic doesn’t have a defined shape as it is a mass of ice which melts and refreezes unlike Antarctica which is a continent – to which they replied they already knew that but its still Antarctica.
Perhaps its because most of the population of lego consumers live closer to the arctic and orange is a bit more modern colour than red. I’m not sure.
While I have you, I’d also like to ask a question: how do you buy sets for yourself and justify this to your kids? My lego intake kind of has to be with Christmas and birthdays and maybe a small sets for the various more minor consumer-oriented holidays such as Easter (as a country we’re slowly starting to adopt Halloween but its early days yet). Obviously for my birthday I get something huge such as a modular building, but I still spend far more time shopping in my mind and windows shopping on the internet than actually purchasing things. And when I buy them sets for their birthdays, they are very carefully researched. I can’t even really sneak a box in build it at night and break it down for parts as they will instantly recognise any new types of parts or parts in new colours even in my carefully sorted collection.
Maybe I will just have to wait until they enter their own dark ages in 10 – 15 years time – and then all their lego will be mine (bwah ha ha!)
That is a great point, Antarctica gets all the penguins but none of the LEGO love.
As for buying sets, I technically own zero LEGO! My kids have a mountain of it and I am obsessed with it vicariously through them. I would have to put the brakes on my boardgame obsession before getting into the modular buildings (which are the coolest) but I can’t do it yet. I think Jeff has a similar approach to you, with modular birthdays and a mix of him/them buying for kids.