Hey, a Futurama set!

Why is there a fire underwater?

I have this set. I have no idea why, since it is from my dark ages, but I have this set. This weird little set.

@Yeetforlego said:
"Why is there a fire underwater?"

As Korone once said "Water in the fire, why!?"

@BrickTeller:
I don’t think underwater welding involves flamethrowers, but I believe road flares will continue to burn underwater. Burying them in sand is really the only way to stop them from burning until the fuel is exhausted.

I haven't realised that foot piece before. It doesn't seem to have any aticulation. I really don't like set specific parts.

Being unfamiliar with the backstory of this set, I’m not sure if this is a Driver of the Alpha Team Robot or a Robot Driver for Alpha Team.
Also, @goldenguy880: the 90s are NEVER over!!!

Always disappointed those robo-diver pieces couldn't move their feet. I tended to just assume those cones attached to the back were a jetpack and it could boost around that way

It’s been a looong time since I did chemistry, but if memory serves, magnesium burns underwater. Why you would be burning magnesium from a tool in your mech’s hand is another question. Perhaps as already suggested it’s some kind of welding device.

As someone who only discovered their passion for marine life during the release of 4506 just a few years later, I really, really regret not collecting Mission Deep Sea. I have some of the first-wave and Mission Deep Freeze sets, but none of the Deep Sea ones.

@BrickRandom said:
"This theme has what I consider the least appealing minifig head prints in LEGO history. At this point in time, LEGO figured out they could print almost anything on a minifig head (including a smile that covers the entire face), but they had not yet figured out that they shouldn't. I much prefer the aestetic we get now, it fits the style of the classic figures and feels more LEGO-like."
Gonna have to disagree there, silver-eyes Dash is best Dash.

I love that ridiculous boot piece. I'd really like to see someone get a whole bunch of them together and use them as greebling on a SHIP or something. Such an interesting and bizarre part.

@Zander:
Yup. They use magnesium to make road flares. It oxidizes so powerfully that it will strip oxygen from water molecules to do so. The only way to shut it off is to eliminate any sources of oxygen, hence burying it in sand.

best kind of bonkers Alpha Team was

Thank you Galaxy12_Import, I didn't know until today that this also came with a clock in 4193351. It would also be interesting to see an updated version of the Mech 4789 using ball joints etc.

@Your_Future_President said:
"There’s just casually a skull in the background...

Although I will admit it does complete the room... nice decor "
It's an Ogel mind control orb. The underwater edition that mutates the sharks into monsters under Ogel's control, or something like that. I seem to remember that the diver's purpose was to find and dispose of such orbs.

-
Charge was the... electronics expert, I think? Each Alpha Team member had their own speciality. I know Dash was the motion expert, Crunch was demolitions, Radia was lasers, Cam was motors and Flex was ropes; but Charge is the only one whose speciality I can never quite remember.

This was my first Mission Deep Sea set! This was back in the days before you could learn about upcoming sets months in advance online - and the Lego Adventures UK magazine, my usual first source for Lego news at the time, had just ended so it was no help to me there! - so I hadn't even known there was a second wave of Alpha Team until I happened across these in a toy shop. And as a fan of the first Alpha Team wave, of course I felt like I had to get some of the new range! But yeah, like others have said, the vehicle... doesn't make a huge amount of sense, in hindsight.

As a side-note, regarding comments about Charge's outfit: all the Mission Deep Sea minifigures were retooling of the characters from the previous Alpha Team wave. With the exception of Cam, who got a complete wardrobe overhaul, all the MDS outfits were basically wetsuit adaptions of their standard outfits. And one of Charge's main visually defining features in the first wave had been his dark glasses; so if he kept them undersea, too, it was primarily to keep the character recognisable. (The arctic wave tried changing up the character designs more, with the result that none of them except Dash looked in the least bit like their previous versions!)

@ThatBionicleGuy:
Was Charge “in charge”?

Yup. Charge is the Electrics expert.

Oddly enough, the team members' abilities were not even a 'real' thing in the 2000 game. You just unlocked the related elements by rescuing the according character (with Dash being the initially unlocked one).

What's also interesting is that originally it seems that they planned to give them different names (maybe region specific like Johnny Thunder/Joe Freeman/Sam Grant for example).
Charge's alias is Lexon, Crunch is Tanxx, Cam is Cosma and Tee-Vee is AT-1, while Dash, Ogel and Radia kept their names for some reason.

I got this set alongside the Ogel base and the Mutant Killer Whale, so I noticed a little oddity: The missing oxygen bottle of Charge is actually inside Dash's Mini-Sub from 4795! (as Dash has 2 bottles in the instruction for no explainable reason)
Also note that Charge came with an exchangeable black hair piece (3901) that does a very poor job at recreating his hairdo from the video game - it's actually more closer to Dash's crewcut than the classic Town wig.

At first glance I liked it how they made the Ogel Minion's skulls appear more 'alive' by giving them that evil grin, but on the other hand I would liked to have my skulls a bit more uniform, given how many I got during that time :)

@PurpleDave said:
" @ThatBionicleGuy:
Was Charge “in charge”?"
No, strangely enough; Dash was the team leader. I think, in hindsight, the name Charge was more to tie in with his electrics speciality; most of the other team members have names related to their respective areas of expertise too.

@Atuin - Thanks for the confirmation!

To be fair, that hairpiece was the same one he used in the first wave of Alpha Team sets too (6775); my assumption was that the game was based on the sets, rather than the other way around, so the programmers may have chosen to vary up the characters' appearances a bit more - possibly to make them easier to render in CGI - but I dunno for certain if that was the case.

Either way, though, I liked that the MDS minifigures also came with their original hat / hair pieces which could be interchanged for their diving helmets, it made the figures more versatile ^^

@ThatBionicleGuy :

The game was released in 2000 alongside Stunt Rally and Creator: Knights' Kingdom. The sets were released in Spring 2001.

Whilst it might be possible that the sets were designed in advance of the game (after all designing processes were usually 1-2 years back then) I still think the sets were based on the game and not vice versa. The most problematic thing here is that aside from the figures no models from the 2001 sets appeared in the actual game.

On a side note 2001/2002 had a strange habit of recycling the old Lego Media/Software names into new product lines, often keeping the exact same logo (Racers, Creator, Alpha Team and Island/Island X-Treme Stunts). However some were drastically dfferent from what the original games were.

It's also interesting that Cam is the only member to not keep her original headgear from the 2001 series: Her hair switched from Bright Red to the much rarer Dark Red version^^

Mission Deep Sea as quite hit and miss, to me. The Alpha Team vehicles and subs were terrible (they were submarines, but designed like aircraft, with unfinished sides and giant holes in their superstructures. They were about as water-tight as flyscreen. I was a sucker for underwater-themed toys, as a kid, and it bothered me then, and it bothers me now). But Ogel's mutant monster sea-creatures were fantastic sets. I got the squid, killer whale and stingray, and they were absolutely gorgeous.

But I liked this little guy. I get how they were channeling some kind of mecha, and it didn't really work all that well -- because the suit was just a yellow block that didn't move or do much -- but I still really liked it.

@Atuin said:
"The game was released in 2000 alongside Stunt Rally and Creator: Knights' Kingdom. The sets were released in Spring 2001."
Oh, huh. I didn't realise that. I don't think I heard about the game until the Lego Adventures issue that first introduced the sets - and I didn't actually play it myself until a few years later - so I guess I didn't really have a frame of reference for when it had officially debuted. Thanks for correcting me!

My revised guess, then, would be that they wanted to keep each member of the team with different hair / headwear for the sets, to make them as distinct as possible? As Dash's hairpiece was unique to him in 2001 (it wasn't until 2002 that other minifigures started sporting it too), I suppose that the standard hair was the closest they could find for Charge that would be a different piece, since 2001 didn't have the range of hairstyle options for minifigures that we have today.

@Atuin said:
"It's also interesting that Cam is the only member to not keep her original headgear from the 2001 series: Her hair switched from Bright Red to the much rarer Dark Red version^^"
Yeah, I noticed that, too. She also got the most thorough redesign in general, which I suppose I understand because her tool vest might not have realistically adapted well into an underwater outfit, but was still jarring to me since she was my favourite character from the theme and I never quite adjusted to her new look.

I'm still at a loss to explain the variation in her hairpiece colour, though. Then again, in the game her red hair had black tips, which weren't present in her set version, so maybe she just liked to change it up a bit?

...and it's still not so drastic a change as Radia's pink-to-black hair colour change between MDS and Arctic!

@Atuin said:
"What's also interesting is that originally it seems that they planned to give them different names (maybe region specific like Johnny Thunder/Joe Freeman/Sam Grant for example).
Charge's alias is Lexon, Crunch is Tanxx, Cam is Cosma and Tee-Vee is AT-1, while Dash, Ogel and Radia kept their names for some reason."
Do you have a source for this? It's the first time I've heard of it (by the time Alpha Team launched, LEGO had already dropped the region-specific names that plagued the 1990s), and Google searches aren't yielding any relevant results.

As for the set itself, it's one of the few Alpha Team: Mission Deep Sea sets I own, and as goofy and silly as it may seem to us adults nowadays, I certainly enjoyed it enough as a kid. I'll echo what a few other users have previously said; it was a great having these "impulse" LEGO sets for sampling different themes. For just $4, you get Charge, a robot exo-suit, a bit of underwater scenery, a Mind-Control Orb, and even a short little comic. Enough to play with, and if you enjoyed it, it whets your appetite for the larger sets.

@SJPlego :

https://worldbricks.com/en/catalog-year/2000/catalogs-2001.raw?task=download&fid=2959

Page 50-51.

They changed their names to the more common ones in the summer catalogue as well. I think some localizations of the 2000 game used the uncommon names too, but I can't confirm that at the moment.

Oh I see I forgot Flex/Migh in my older post :)

@Atuin said:
" @SJPlego :

https://worldbricks.com/en/catalog-year/2000/catalogs-2001.raw?task=download&fid=2959

Page 50-51.

They changed their names to the more common ones in the summer catalogue as well. I think some localizations of the 2000 game used the uncommon names too, but I can't confirm that at the moment.

Oh I see I forgot Flex/Migh in my older post :)"
Thanks! Very interesting. I thought myself to be a fairly knowledgeable Alpha Team fan, but I see there's still plenty more to learn!

I haven't delved too deep into it yet, but a quick search for a German playthrough of the PC game led me to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzzMaD4sn8A&list=PL663BEE5CF69E32E1&index=5 As you can see, Crunch is indeed called "Tanxx" in German, just like in that catalog. Now I'm tempted to look into the other language options of the PC game to see if there are even more names that are unheard about.