Random set of the day: Ski
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 8501 Ski, released during 1999. It's one of 33 Technic sets produced that year. It contains 34 pieces, and its retail price was US$6.
It's owned by 2,392 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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52 comments on this article
Bonkle, but actually a "Bonkle" of sorts
Ski sounds enough like Splee that I read it as Skiiiiiiiii, especially with that image.
Anyone else remember the show Catscratch? Waffle? Anybody?
You know it's cool when they replace a random consonant with a Z.
^ Yes, it's not quite as hip as Sliz3r, but definitely more so than Slicer.
I know that the Slizer/Throwbots were hit and miss ... but at the time they came out, I absolutely loved them. I loved how different they were, it made them so interesting to me. They used minimal actual established Lego pieces, and I liked that, and I also really liked the colour-schemes. They were very simple, but really really worked for me.
"How do we make this box art even cooler? Quick! Put a big creepy face on the side of that cliff!"
Looks less like skiing, more like cliff-jumping. In the snow.
@tspike said:
"You know it's cool when they replace a random consonant with a Z."
Hmm…
Eastern Europe: Zlicers.
Rap community: Slicerz.
Lawyers: Szicers.
Slizers, the Ancestors of Bionicle.
They come in some cool containers you could put on a belt, and fold the slizer inside with some discs.
Also they had instructions included where you could combine multiple sets into a big model.
I still got all the regular sized ones stored somewhere in those containers, I never got the big ones (Blaster / Millenium)
I was very intrigued by these guys...until I got Torch. Then I realized that nearly 90° bent limb really inhibits posing, and the throwing arm was both worthless for posing and over 50% longer than the other arm. Still, I picked up a few more, like Electro. And then when Bionicle came out and I started to build MOCs, I ended up hunting around local stores until I’d found every Throwbot. I may have even bought every Roborider, too, all for spare parts.
Oh man, classic Slizer / Throwbot! I remember having a lot of trouble finding this one as a kid, it was never in stock, and when I finally found it on the store shelves, I noticed that the container piece was broken and so we returned it to the store and I had to wait for another one to get in stock. (In the days before it was easy to directly contact Lego about any issues, alas.)
Always liked the design, with the skier shape just looking so natural and such. This set was certainly one of the highlights of the theme.
The 4119338: WING 7M part was so under-utilised. Beautiful part if you ever get to use it.
I like to imagine that this guy hangs out on Krysto (a.k.a.Ice Planet 2002) with Kopaka and Stormer, and the Alpha Team in their Mission: Deep Freeze incarnation. (Sometimes they let the ice-themed Robo Riders tag along.)
So hes using one ski pole and...a wheel...
@tspike said:
"You know it's cool when they replace a random consonant with a Z."
Yeah it's pretty cringy when someone does that. Especially someone who chooses their username in their teens.
@gorf43 said:
"So hes using one ski pole and...a wheel... "
Nah, not a wheel, it’s a disc. The left arm functions as a flinging arm, like the early days Matoran etc.
What the heck does “slizer” mean?
And why is the wall scowling?
@Zordboy said:
"I know that the Slizer/Throwbots were hit and miss ... but at the time they came out, I absolutely loved them. I loved how different they were, it made them so interesting to me. They used minimal actual established Lego pieces, and I liked that, and I also really liked the colour-schemes. They were very simple, but really really worked for me."
Same here. Throwbots was the first thing I decided on my own to "collect". Pokemon was huge at the time, and I thought having buildable pocket Robots was way cooler! It certainly was a factor in my Bionicle interest.
@Terrasher said:
""How do we make this box art even cooler? Quick! Put a big creepy face on the side of that cliff!""
I would never have seen that if you hadn’t pointed it out. Of course, I often find the RSotD a good occasion to look more closely at box art than I normally ever would on my own if I saw the thing in a store or online.
@namekuji said:
"The 4119338: WING 7M part was so under-utilised. Beautiful part if you ever get to use it."
Agree, I've been buying this part in a few different colors over this past year and plan to start experimenting with it in 2022. The built-in turbine is just begging for some dynamic MOCs.
I collected the Slizer and Throwbot sets. Don't know why. I didn't know why back then either. I kind of waited for some sort of story or mythology, but none came. I held a grudge against Bionicle because it had the story and mythology that I wanted. To this day, I own ZERO Bionicle sets as a result.
Great set, and at the same time, one of the weirder of the bunch. What the hell can you do when your feet are two giant skis? But it nonetheless was one of my favorite Throwbots.
Around a year ago, I bought a lot of used Slizers from eBay. Almost all the sets from the line where included, including two copies of this guy for some reason. Still, I think Ski might be one of my favorites, so I am glad to get two of him.
The general atmosphere conveyed by the Box Art on each set feels like it was begging to get the lore and mythology that Bionicle ended up getting. Who are those mysterious monsters that appear on the box art of each Slizer? That is a question I desperately want answered.
"We're gonna take it slow, take it easy, make sure everybody has a goood time. 'Cause what is skiing about? Having a good...? Time, that's right. Now, just a few safety things to keep in mind: First of all, look straight ahead when you ski. You look down, you're gonna fall, you're gonna have a bad time. Also, be aware of skiers around you. You run into another skier, your skis are gonna cross, gonna have a bad time."-"Thumper" South Park Eps 'Aspen'
@PDelahanty said:
"I collected the Slizer and Throwbot sets. Don't know why. I didn't know why back then either. I kind of waited for some sort of story or mythology, but none came. I held a grudge against Bionicle because it had the story and mythology that I wanted. To this day, I own ZERO Bionicle sets as a result."
Seems rather unfair to Bionicle-it’s not the line’s fault Slizers didn’t get a mythology.
I've always been fond of Slizer. It was something new from Lego, and it was quite cool.
@Be_hapi said:
"And why is the wall scowling?"
All the Slizers had evil environments they seemed to be facing off against. Evil ice wall, evil jellyfish, evil storm, evil tree…There’s about five different versions of the story though so the whats and whys are fuzzy.
Also, interesting that the American name for this guy, Ski, is used but the comments seem to prefer using the European name for the brand, Slizers. Does brickset have any plans to start adding non-American set names to things like this where there were multiple titles?
Oh boy, nostalgia hitting hard.. Almost forgot I had these, so added these to my database :D
TIL the minifig faceshield snaps on to bionicle legs, a fact utterly useless but highly entertaining
@Brickalili said:
" @Be_hapi said:
"And why is the wall scowling?"
All the Slizers had evil environments they seemed to be facing off against. Evil ice wall, evil jellyfish, evil storm, evil tree…There’s about five different versions of the story though so the whats and whys are fuzzy.
Also, interesting that the American name for this guy, Ski, is used but the comments seem to prefer using the European name for the brand, Slizers. Does brickset have any plans to start adding non-American set names to things like this where there were multiple titles?"
If you go to Brickset’s full listing for this set by clicking on the set’s number in blue, you’ll see the set’s name as Ski and its subtheme as Slizers. I think that was true everywhere but could be mistaken - not a range I know much about. So if Europeans are referring to this particular character as Slizers, I believe that’s incorrect, but as I said, I could be wrong.
Ah, my only Throwbot! (I'll stick with the American name as the one I knew--it's taken me years to keep straight whether Slizers refers to CyberSlam, Throwbots, or RoboRiders). I wasn't into them at the time and it took the release of Bionicle before I ended up having any interest. I got Ski from some forgotten toy aisle in 2002, at a point where I still had no Rahi, so he ended up pulling some double-duty as the Bad Guy™.
I also ended up enjoying the "cannister": a more play-functional shape than most of the pure cylinders, and Ski's white-on-blue colour scheme was Space-theme-friendly. Without any interior studs, it didn't QUITE make a good fig scale spaceship, but it did the job in a pinch, and I would still describe it as the most swooshable "cannister."
@Zordboy said:
"I know that the Slizer/Throwbots were hit and miss ..."
I see what you did there!
I got an entire set of Slizers off eBay last year. They have ball-socket and Technic colors that I think are unique to the line if you're super anal about color matching in your MOCs. The plastic quality of the large socket pieces are softer than today's, and I'm curious if custom colors proved too expensive or just too confusing given how stringent Lego is now with colors of axels and gears.
@Zander said:
" @Brickalili said:
" @Be_hapi said:
"And why is the wall scowling?"
All the Slizers had evil environments they seemed to be facing off against. Evil ice wall, evil jellyfish, evil storm, evil tree…There’s about five different versions of the story though so the whats and whys are fuzzy.
Also, interesting that the American name for this guy, Ski, is used but the comments seem to prefer using the European name for the brand, Slizers. Does brickset have any plans to start adding non-American set names to things like this where there were multiple titles?"
If you go to Brickset’s full listing for this set by clicking on the set’s number in blue, you’ll see the set’s name as Ski and its subtheme as Slizers. I think that was true everywhere but could be mistaken - not a range I know much about. So if Europeans are referring to this particular character as Slizers, I believe that’s incorrect, but as I said, I could be wrong.
"
"Slizers" was the name of the theme here in Europe (or at least here in Denmark). The name of this character in europe was "Ice" (which is also diplayed in the picture over the Slizers logo). The american name of the theme were "Throwbots". It's interesting that brickset calls the theme by the eurpean name, but the set is the american name.
@Orange_Jooze said:
"TIL the minifig faceshield snaps on to bionicle legs, a fact utterly useless but highly entertaining"
FYI, this is actually the technic faceshield visor that is used for the Slizer's heads. Most of the Slizers had a unique face covering, but this set and 8506 used a visor instead.
@Be_hapi said:
"And why is the wall scowling?"
Each of the Slizers had an environmental enemy that was never explained in any depth in the lore - what little of it there was - but appeared in that Slizer's box-art, and in the art on one of each of their collectable throwing disks. In Ice Slizer's case, it was this glacier-creature/mountain-monster-thing.
I've still got all the classic-wave Slizers. I took a while to warm up to them at first - when my aunt and uncle bought me Jungle Slizer 8505 as a birthday present one year, I was weirded out by him and took him back to the store to exchange for 7121 instead... a significant decision for me, as that would be my first foray into the movie series that would become my other serious obsession over subsequent years. But a year or so later, I warmed up to them enough that I bought Rock Silzer 8506 with my own money, and quickly sparked off a FASCINATION with these things - especially given their world, which seemed so enticing but had so little official information about. It enticed the imagination, and made me want to come up with my own stories and world-building.
It took me several years, mostly sourcing them second-hand after they left store shelves, but I was able to get all eight Slizers in the end. I hit the jackpot when I found a windfall of Ice, Energy, City and Sub - the last four I didn't have - in a local charity shop in maybe 2004, complete with their original boxes and everything.
Ice here was one of the 'Good Guy' Slizers, along with City, Fire and Sub - though the difference between them and the 'Evil' Slizers was never given any elaboration beyond an excuse to divide them into factions - which seemed to be arbitrated entirely based on which Fusion Combiner they were part of. He, naturally, inhabited the ice region of Planet Slizer - known during development as the 'Pizza Planet' because it was made up of slices of seven different environments.
In the theme's second year, the Millennium Meteor would hit planet Slizer (guess in which year this theme took place!), destroying half of the planet and killing the four 'Bad Guy' Slizers. From the rubble rose three new Slizers who proceeded to proclaim their dominance over the planet. There was a Millennium Slizer 8520 who fit in there somewhere, too; but no-one quite seems to know where or how - he can be seen as the major good guy or bad guy depending on the fan, because there's so little known story media to confirm either way. I had three of the 2000 Slizers, too - never did get Spark 8522 - in the end, but eventually sold them on. Kinda regret that with Millennium, at least, who was both my best Lego find of the time and one of the coolest of the Slizers, but eh. It is what it is.
Point of random note that the boxes for the 2000 Slizers, which showed the surviving Slizers on the back along with the newcomers, called Ice and co. by their American names - Ski, Turbo, Torch and Scuba - instead of the names they had gone by on the previous year's packaging.
I always kind of figured Bionicle grew out of these things. But then I kind of forgot about them. I couldn’t tell, at the time, who these were marketed towards.
Were they for Technic fans who just wanted more color? Were they a gateway drug for children into the wild world of Great Ball Contraptions?
It was hard to know.
@Orange_Jooze said:
"TIL the minifig faceshield snaps on to bionicle legs, a fact utterly useless but highly entertaining"
Actually if memory serves correctly, I don't think it's the minifig face shield. Its the face shield for the technic figures' helmets
@gaiathedj said:
" @Zander said:
" @Brickalili said:
" @Be_hapi said:
"And why is the wall scowling?"
All the Slizers had evil environments they seemed to be facing off against. Evil ice wall, evil jellyfish, evil storm, evil tree…There’s about five different versions of the story though so the whats and whys are fuzzy.
Also, interesting that the American name for this guy, Ski, is used but the comments seem to prefer using the European name for the brand, Slizers. Does brickset have any plans to start adding non-American set names to things like this where there were multiple titles?"
If you go to Brickset’s full listing for this set by clicking on the set’s number in blue, you’ll see the set’s name as Ski and its subtheme as Slizers. I think that was true everywhere but could be mistaken - not a range I know much about. So if Europeans are referring to this particular character as Slizers, I believe that’s incorrect, but as I said, I could be wrong.
"
"Slizers" was the name of the theme here in Europe (or at least here in Denmark). The name of this character in europe was "Ice" (which is also diplayed in the picture over the Slizers logo). The american name of the theme were "Throwbots". It's interesting that brickset calls the theme by the eurpean name, but the set is the american name."
Thanks for the clarification!
I’m going to second Brickalili’s request that where a set or range has had different names in different regions, that those be listed in the set’s entry including which region was which.
I don’t know if there’s an existing list showing names across regions that @Huw can import. If not, it may be something that we as Bricksetters can aggregate through our collective knowledge. The LEGO catalogues that are already on Brickset should help.
@Formendacil said:
"I got Ski from some forgotten toy aisle in 2002, at a point where I still had no Rahi, so he ended up pulling some double-duty as the Bad Guy™."
Oh, I remember doing that same thing too, now that you mention it! First-year Bionicle didn't have any villain sets at a pocket-money price point, and I didn't really pay the Rahi much mind at the time in any case, so the Slizers who I owned then - Rock, Judge, and especially Fire - became Makuta's new minions for me, too, to give the Toa some worthy foes to do battle with ^^
Of course, when the Bohrok showed up the following year as canister-sized enemies, they no longer needed to fill that role; but I always liked to come up with ways the Slizers could fit into the Bionicle lore, regardless.
@Phoenixio:
Certainly not ski. Not with those clunky things strapped to his feet. All those hollow spaces will just dig into the snow. Can’t fly either, with those tiny turbines mounted so far off-center.
@brick_r:
Now I want pizza with a side of fries...
@Zander:
If you look at the artwork, it simply says “Ice Slizer”. The database has a mix of three logo styles, which include “(type) Slizer”, and generic “Throwbot” and LEGO Technic logos. Bricklink lists them by “NA / EU” names, which are:
8500 Torch / Fire
8501 Ski / Ice
8502 Turbo / City
8503 Scuba / Sub
8504 Jet / Judge
8505 Amazon / Jungle
8506 Granite / Rock
8507 Electro / Energy
8520 Millennium / Millennia
Only 8521 Flare, 8522 Spark, and 8523 Blaster skipped the dual-naming convention.
@Padmewan:
The most unique colors I can think of from the theme was regular purple from Electro and Spark, or teal from Turbo and Amazon, both of which featured heavily in the Cyberslam theme. Where it got messy was how colors translated into different materials. I know the second Throwbot torso (the linear gearbox used for Electro) was a different plastic, as were the 8-tooth and worm gears. So 8504 Jet had a noticeably darker yellow gearbox, and 8500 Torch had a couple darker gears.
@ThatBionicleGuy:
While I can identify the enemy in all of the 850x sets, Millennium shows all of the previous environments behind him, and only Scuba’s underwater environment features anything that could be recognized as an enemy (a sea serpent). The other three from the final wave have no faces visible in the environment.
Also, that story explanation makes no sense. If each of these characters was battling a hostile environment/spirit, but four of the original eight were “bad”, that would mean those four environments were actually good, right? There’s nothing about the artwork to suggest that they’re split into two factions, and those background faces mostly look pretty sinister (Granite just has a skull-shaped rock formation that doesn’t seem very alive). Electro’s artwork even suggests that these small sets, at least, represent species rather than characters, as you can see a similar shape being zapped by the enemy face in the lower left corner. Besides a handful of carryover parts, and the Technic ball-and-socket system, one of the big contributions this theme seems to have inadvertently made to Bionicle is demonstrating the need for a strong core story, and finding ways to make it accessible to the consumers. Otherwise, everyone is left to figure out their own way based on whatever scraps of evidence they can find, and any work put into coming up with an official story is basically wasted effort.
@Zander said:
" @gaiathedj said:
" @Zander said:
" @Brickalili said:
" @Be_hapi said:
"And why is the wall scowling?"
All the Slizers had evil environments they seemed to be facing off against. Evil ice wall, evil jellyfish, evil storm, evil tree…There’s about five different versions of the story though so the whats and whys are fuzzy.
Also, interesting that the American name for this guy, Ski, is used but the comments seem to prefer using the European name for the brand, Slizers. Does brickset have any plans to start adding non-American set names to things like this where there were multiple titles?"
If you go to Brickset’s full listing for this set by clicking on the set’s number in blue, you’ll see the set’s name as Ski and its subtheme as Slizers. I think that was true everywhere but could be mistaken - not a range I know much about. So if Europeans are referring to this particular character as Slizers, I believe that’s incorrect, but as I said, I could be wrong.
"
"Slizers" was the name of the theme here in Europe (or at least here in Denmark). The name of this character in europe was "Ice" (which is also diplayed in the picture over the Slizers logo). The american name of the theme were "Throwbots". It's interesting that brickset calls the theme by the eurpean name, but the set is the american name."
Thanks for the clarification!
I’m going to second Brickalili’s request that where a set or range has had different names in different regions, that those be listed in the set’s entry including which region was which.
I don’t know if there’s an existing list showing names across regions that @Huw can import. If not, it may be something that we as Bricksetters can aggregate through our collective knowledge. The LEGO catalogues that are already on Brickset should help.
"
Yeah I feel like if you’re going to list the theme using the European name of Slizers you should also get the European name of the set itself (in this case Ice rather than Ski) somewhere in the listing. Or just give Brits like me a chance to see the sets in the names I remember them as, maybe a toggle or something?
Ah yes, Ski. For a long time I only owned Jet, Ski and Turbo (and yes, I now realize they sound like a Turbo Jetski combined XD).
Ski was the most 'normal' of them between Jet's funky potbelly and long arms and articulated neck (he's awesome!.). And Turbo being a car...
So yeah, Ski was a more basal Slizer/Throwboat. And I love it for that!
@CarolinaOnMyMind said:
" @Terrasher said:
""How do we make this box art even cooler? Quick! Put a big creepy face on the side of that cliff!""
I would never have seen that if you hadn’t pointed it out. Of course, I often find the RSotD a good occasion to look more closely at box art than I normally ever would on my own if I saw the thing in a store or online. "
That's actually supposed to be one of the ice monsters that he fought. Another one can be seen on his 6 lights disc from 8508. Actually all Slizer boxes had monster faces drawn on random things in the background (except the 2000 ones).
@PurpleDave said:
" @ThatBionicleGuy :
While I can identify the enemy in all of the 850x sets, Millennium shows all of the previous environments behind him, and only Scuba’s underwater environment features anything that could be recognized as an enemy (a sea serpent). The other three from the final wave have no faces visible in the environment.
Also, that story explanation makes no sense. If each of these characters was battling a hostile environment/spirit, but four of the original eight were “bad”, that would mean those four environments were actually good, right? There’s nothing about the artwork to suggest that they’re split into two factions, and those background faces mostly look pretty sinister (Granite just has a skull-shaped rock formation that doesn’t seem very alive). Electro’s artwork even suggests that these small sets, at least, represent species rather than characters, as you can see a similar shape being zapped by the enemy face in the lower left corner. Besides a handful of carryover parts, and the Technic ball-and-socket system, one of the big contributions this theme seems to have inadvertently made to Bionicle is demonstrating the need for a strong core story, and finding ways to make it accessible to the consumers. Otherwise, everyone is left to figure out their own way based on whatever scraps of evidence they can find, and any work put into coming up with an official story is basically wasted effort."
Oh, yeah, I meant just the original wave of eight; sorry if I wasn't clear. As far as I'm aware, the second-year Slizers were all specifically enemies for the surviving good guy Slizers - aside from the Millennium thing I mentioned; there was a Lego World Club mini-feature which showed him battling Blaster Slizer in an arena, establishing them as enemies, but other context is slim-to-none - so didn't have environmental enemies.
As for it not making sense... as others have observed, Slizers lore was different by region - the American version, for example, gave each Throwbot their own individual planet rather than the pizza-slices-single-planet of the European lore - so certain aspects of the story I mentioned may also have been from specific regions. The only source I ever saw list the good/evil alignments explicitly was a UK catalogue (here on brickset, https://images.brickset.com/library/view/?f=catalogues/c99uk2 p32, and also my first source of Slizer lore, hence the reason it stuck in my mind for so long), so I honestly couldn't tell you how wide-spread that concept was... though it did also reference the monsters as well, so...? While material included in / on the box, at least in the UK version (the division of characters on the back of the box, and a mini-comic that showed them forming into the Fusions), also implied two factions, they didn't spell out any specific good/evil split between them. Meanwhile the monsters could have been intended as an Always Chaotic Evil deal, opposing anyone who sets foot in their realms... making 'bad' Slizers vs. monsters a case of evil vs. eviler.
I dunno, I personally kind of liked the fun of figuring out what the heck was meant to be going on from the loose scraps of lore, when it was suitably enticing. That was... very much the whole experience of understanding various Lego themes in my childhood, before story media became consistent, and I must admit that I rather enjoyed the creative freedom it allowed. But I do see your point, it's very much not the way to come up with a Big Hit Story Theme like they were looking for at the time xD
This was my first non-system set ever. Still have this guy built. It was a gift on my 6th birthday.
Like with RoboRiders and UFO multiple versions of the Lore exist. In the UK one there were good and Bad Teams that matched the combiner models. The second generation Slizers didn't have monster enemies because they were supposed to be evil mutants created from the parts of the evil team when a meteorite destroyed them.
...according to that catalogue I linked, Ice's mission includes "destroying the fur of the bloodthirsty animals that inhabit his continent so they cannot survive the cold". That sounds... honestly crueller and more brutal than outright killing said animals, since it would leave them to *slowly freeze to death*, and I'm left to wonder who thought that was a fitting thing for a 'good'-aligned character to be doing!
@Huw - The inventory link says "34 pieces" but click the link and the inventory itself only shows a total of 22. Notably missing are the gears and disc(s), among others. The BrickLink inventory appears more complete (I don't have the set to verify) but also has "missing color code" errors for a number of the parts. I wonder if a similar mapping issue is causing them to be omitted on Brickset?
@ThatBionicleGuy:
That lack of broad dissemination of the story is part of the reason I only finished collecting the core set for parts to build Bionicle MOCs. In contrast, I stayed 200% complete on the core sets for the first three years of Bionicle, collected full sets of all the basic Mata and Nuva masks, and perhaps the only privately-owned complete set of Krana in the world, all while running a Bionicle news site. If they had to rely on the Throwbots to save the company, they’d probably be owned by Mattel (who did reportedly extend an offer to buy them out during the lean times) or Hasbro by now.
The fact that there were inconsistent stories across different regions clearly suggests the design team never created a story bible, or if they did it never left Billund. Without any official story to work with, LEGO Magazine staff whose job it is to present story elements in their product would have been left to come up with whatever made sense to them at the time.
@ThatBionicleGuy:
Depending on how extreme the cold is, it wouldn’t be that slow. For an unclothed human, you’d probably be unconscious within 15 minutes, and dead within 45 if exposed to sub-freezing temps. If you attempted this at the coldest place on Earth (a basin in Antarctica where the cold air just pools and never warms up), you’d probably be dead by the 15 minute mark.
Conversely, aquatic mammals like sea leopards and orcas survive their entire adult lives without fur coats. Those that frequent the polar regions survive thanks to thick layers of blubber. They’re not regularly subjected to the same temperature extremes found on land (if they were, they’d asphyxiate when the oceans froze around them), where both blubber and fur are generally required for long-term survival. A few years ago when we had an extreme sub-zero cold snap, the Detroit Zoo even had to keep the polar bears indoors because their diet had been carefully set so they wouldn’t build up a thick layer of blubber or they’d die of heat stroke in the normally mild winters.
@dkressin:
All set data is pulled from the LEGO servers. This includes the official piece count, and the set inventories. There are two drawbacks to this method. One is that some set inventories include parts that didn’t even exist at the time, if they’ve been designated as a successor to a retired mold. The other is that other parts cease to be tracked altogether, resulting in set inventories that fall short of their official piece counts. Bricklink and Rebrickable keep curated set inventories, and Bricklink even tracks set inventory variants. In a few extreme cases, like the TMNT Shellraiser, they catalog them as distinct sets.
@PurpleDave: Sorry PD; only place that I can think of w/that combo was Mrs. Vanellis, now just Vanellis...and no where in my area any more...:(
Turbo may have been my first Throwbot, but Ski here was the one that really sold me on the ball and socket joint concept. The color scheme was good, and I loved posing him (I assumed they were all "male") in a variety of poses. In the USA at least, there wasn't a story to really go along with the Throwbots, other than them living on an alien world with a crazy mix of biomes. So, my 10 year-old mind made up stories for Ski and his Throwbot brethren. The disc-throwing feature was fun, too, and I had some good times terrorizing the cat and my sister's Barbie playtime with sneak disc attacks.
A fun, novel way to build action-figure characters and an intriguing appearance that hinted at something really cool, plus there were collectible discs. It was proto-BIONICLE, but it lacked the cohesive, fleshed-out story that would catapult BIONICLE into the stratosphere and leave Throwbots in the dust. I never really unfolded Ski from his container after BIONICLE came on the scene, but at least now, I respect greatly what LEGO was trying to do. We were seeing the birth of a theme in real-time with Throwbots and then Roboriders. For that, I am ever-grateful to Throwbots and glad I own the original four.