Random set of the day: Cement Mixer
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 6682 Cement Mixer, released during 1985. It's one of 24 Town sets produced that year. It contains 90 pieces and 1 minifig.
It's owned by 3,686 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you might find it for sale at BrickLink or eBay.
115 likes
28 comments on this article
You know, the first time I ever saw that hollowed out cone, it was 2007, and I thought it was new, I had no idea it had such a legacy. Or someone at LEGO broke it out of the archive and was like, "You've all been sleeping on this great part!" which actually appears to be the case because 2006 was its big resurgence after a brief stint in the 90s.
You wouldn't think that "cute as hell" would be an active way to describe a cement mixer, yet, here we are.
They need an entire truck with that many wheels to haul around a mixer that you push into the back yard like a wheelbarrow?
Budget cuts forced the middle to be left out.
Iv'e never seen a cement mixer with such a small drum. I've seen a different kind of cement mixer with tanks and without a spinning drum (turns out they're called volumetric concrete mixers), but never one with a huge gap between the drum and the cab. The proportions on this are so weird. I'm sure it would work in real life, it just could be easily twice as efficient if the drum weren't the tiny kind like in 5610 .
Weird. I think I got part of this in a loose lot I got over the weekend. That hollow cone doesn't come in many sets in blue.
Change that blue to black. Will look much better.
There seems to be a significant lack of a chute... I know Id be mad if this showed up at work!
One word: icon.
I had this! Oh man it was such a great set. It’s not much to look at, but it came with several 1x1 tiles to act as the cement. It was so fun to dump it out over and over again.
AND it had a lever with a blue base and yellow handle. You don’t see stuff like that anymore!
Agree with jkb above. It’s iconic.
@gorf43 said:
"There seems to be a significant lack of a chute... I know Id be mad if this showed up at work! "
If you look closely there is a hinge under the taillights, so the entire thing flips over to pour out the mix. More like a portable mixer on wheels you rent from Home Depot, but in truck form. The only thing I don't like about it is that strange place the exhaust stack is situated.
Still, it has working doors and a flip-top roof, so gets a pass from me.
cemen,t
Objectively it looks like crap, especially compared to 7990 or 60018 (oddly enough 60235 uses a smaller drum, making it look more like 6682), but this set made a real impression on me, which I think is due to part 4742 Blue Cone 4 x 4 x 2 Hollow No Studs, which always felt interesting. It's a round slope that can contain other parts
Remember wanting this back when it was new. Flash forward many years later and found a few in eBay LEGO lots and have two of these now..
It may not be accurate but it fits my town perfectly, old and 4-stud. Just the way I like it.
I always like how when there's a classic city set and the reviews are either a lover of the nostalgia from the older LEGO builders to the younger builders who look for and comment on the lack of details that sets have now.
I sit on the nostalgia camp from an era when a forklift is as wide as a truck as well as a plane, and love this set.
Of course this is a generalisation based on nothing but a hunch.
I have this one, and it is indeed really nice. However it'll always be remembered most for the time I got my finger stuck in that blue cone piece and needed my mom and some liquid soap to get it out again...
One of my first sets. Probably designed by someone who never saw an actual cement mixer truck.
Cool little set! Always wanted it as a kid, never got it :-(
As for why the drum is so small compared to the size of the truck, that's simple: this is not meant for regular cement, but special Lego cement. Which is invisible, insanely heavy and always in unlimited supply. On truckload is all you ever need!
Yay! My very first set with a minifig! Which I still have! Hmm, perhaps this is the true reason behind my latent interest in civil engineering?
I received this set on my 4th birthday and had years of fun playing with it, leaving the pieces scratched, yellowed or missing.
At 36 I decided to buy it again for nostalgia purposes, so I did: it has the box and the instructions, it has shiny vintage pieces and a hardly used minifigure. It is now standing proudly on display.
Fun fact: No matter from which website or seller you buy this set, the cement pieces are ALWAYS missing! (I still have to Bricklink mine).
@sid3windr said:
"I have this one, and it is indeed really nice. However it'll always be remembered most for the time I got my finger stuck in that blue cone piece and needed my mom and some liquid soap to get it out again..."
Pretty sure I had this happen as well one time! Still have this set - one of my first town sets. Always thought it was funny/neat how the back tailgate and last fender popped off on the hinge so you can dump out all of the 1x1 grey "cement" tiles.
@scottd:
It’s sets precisely like this that were part of why I gravitated towards Space and Castle themes as a young kid. It’s far easier to handwave away simple, blocky designs when they represent structures that were made of huge quarried blocks, or that needed thick armor plating, than it is with stuff you might see driving down the street any random day. If Pirates had come out when I was still young, I probably would have been more interested in that, too.
@sid3windr said:
"I have this one, and it is indeed really nice. However it'll always be remembered most for the time I got my finger stuck in that blue cone piece and needed my mom and some liquid soap to get it out again..."
I actually got my finger stuck in that piece one time. I had to use force to get it out.
I found this set in a toy store in Sao Paolo on a trip to visit friends in Brazil the summer before starting high school (1991). I was amazed to find it still on shelves since it was already six years old at the time, but I figured that LEGO had different release schedules for different world markets. I had to buy it. I remember getting this and a house that I had never seen in the U.S. I'm looking through the Brickset catalog and I can't seem to find it, though. I have to look through my parents' attic.
One of my pet peeves. This is a concrete mixer. Cement is an "ingredient" of concrete; one of many - you mix them as you travel between the batch plant to the construction site.
I was 6 when the 1985 sets were released and this was one of the first I got that year, don’t think a cement truck had ever been in the range before. I loved the new lever and hollow cone parts but was a little disappointed to discover that the lever didn’t actually make the mixer start rotating!
The minifigure torso was new at the time as well I think. Great memories, as with anything where the instruction manual came with a yellow border!
@ElephantKnight said:
"Weird. I think I got part of this in a loose lot I got over the weekend. That hollow cone doesn't come in many sets in blue.
Change that blue to black. Will look much better."
That is not really true. It came in quite a few sets in blue (particularly in the mid 90's). In fact it only came in blue until the mid 00's. But nowadays it is rarely used in blue.
Where is today's random set of the day?