Random set of the day: Building Stories with Nana Bird
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 4177 Building Stories with Nana Bird, released during 2001. It's one of 22 Creator sets produced that year. It contains 373 pieces and 3 minifigs, and its retail price was US$30/£34.99.
It's owned by 99 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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44 comments on this article
Hurray, normal times are back!
Also, who the heck is Nana Bird? I also desperately want to know what was on that VHS tape.
And apparently it comes with a home movie? Or at least, the case for one?
This is so obscure it’s almost “lost media” material.
here's the tape:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tokMQHyimqg
@Meppers said: "here's the tape:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tokMQHyimqg"
For a second, there, I thought you'd Rick-rolled us all.
Everyone’s talking about NaNa Bird but not enough people are talking about the blue elephant being ridden by a monkey with an umbrella
@Meppers said:
"here's the tape:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tokMQHyimqg"
Wow. There's no way to get the 20-year old dude out of my head, who bought this sets and played out the whole story, narrating it to himself. I don't see people often, too, but that is just too much.
OMG that is the most cringy video I have ever seen. It was so corny and poorly made.
I would not have enjoyed that as a child. The Fimbles were a lot better and more educational.
Jesus, even Play School had different people doing the different voices, this had one Yank doing everyone including the voice over which was just confusing and weird.
To think the Legoland game came out around the same time (or possibly before actually) yet had much better animation and story.
David Lynch designs a LEGO set
Is that a smart phone with a camera notch on the side?
And... no one talks about that the Gen1 Creator was Jack Stone half a year before Jack Stone^^
Max and Tina (yes that's there official name) were the original Jack Stone figures and came out in the winter wave of 2001, where as Jack Stone came out in the summer wave of 2001.
EDIT:
It's so weird seeing the figures with ball-jointed heads and swivel joints at the hands in the video whilst the actual figures don't have these^^ I wonder if these were prototypes or just custom made for the video...
@Atuin said:
"And... no one talks about that the Gen1 Creator was Jack Stone half a year before Jack Stone^^
Max and Tina (yes that's there official name) were the original Jack Stone figures and came out in the winter wave of 2001, where as Jack Stone came out in the summer wave of 2001.
EDIT:
It's so weird seeing the figures with ball-jointed heads and swivel joints at the hands in the video whilst the actual figures don't have these^^ I wonder if these were prototypes or just custom made for the video..."
They look like they may actually be Technic figs to me.
Well this set is pretty strange. I know a friend who has this set.
Stop roasting this poor children's VHS. I think it's cute
@ayayop said: "Is that a smart phone with a camera notch on the side?"
... yes.
Yes it is.
They kinda do look like Technic heads in the neck, but all things considered they are far more close to Fabuland heads in this regard, especially given that Fabuland figures are about the same size as Jack Stone figures.
I was all set to make a joke about the thing that looked like a VHS sleeve, then I read the comments a find out that that's what it was! Truth is stranger than fiction. (Because fiction has to make sense.)
The Big Nana Bird crawled so that The LEGO Movie could fly.
Seems huwbot is not posting RPOTD frequently recently.
A lion 8’ tall, a duck? with a wingspan of some 20’ and an elephant a tad larger than the lion (which is probably about right). Exactly what fuels these ‘stories’ I wonder…
One of the biggest Max and Tina sets, which also included Jake — not a set I was interested in though; I wanted something smaller.
@Spidermanager said:
"This is so obscure it’s almost “lost media” material."
This was in printed catalogs for a few years. Hardly obscure.
In the video the titles say the models were made by Kurt Kristiansen, presumably the same one who also more recently designed 75308 R2D2.
It also says the story was written by George Tarry, who has also written for Postman Pat and Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, amongst others.
So some people might think the video is, well, let's just say "dated", but it has an interesting pedigree.
I also like the giraffe, it looks like a throwback to the original Legoland giraffe designed by Dagny Holm.
Interestingly the video doesn't say who the narrator is.
Remember the time when you had to get full VHS tapes just to watch 20 minute videos? In the age of Youtube, this seems almost completely unheard of for most people...
Anyway, the video is quite fascinating. I am quite a nerd when it comes to obscure LEGO stuff, including media, but I've never heard about that VHS video until now...
Oh, this isn’t my first run-in with Nana Bird… But even after reading the comments, I’m calm, not sweating profusely, and my hands aren’t trembling, so I’m going to assume it was just looking up set inventories to see what came with a particular part.
Nana Bird? Could they not say Mother Goose?
These sets are actually a source for chrome parts, making them pretty valuable.
I’ve got this set. Now I’ve seen the video I like it even more. Weird
That’s the 90th anniversary set right there, might need to be updated and released with a dvd instead of vhs.
The chrome parts were good at least. And the video actually has some charm to it.
The 'NaNa Bird' doesn't exactly strike too much fear by its name alone though.
@dja: No, there'd just be a QR code in the instruction manual you could scan to watch the video.
I believe that for the given time, that film was alright (only problem I find is the fact that both characters are voiced by the same man). I feel like people are hating on this film due to Jack Stone figures, to be honest, I feel they fit well in here (possibly the only place where they look good).
It's odd how in the accompanying video the figures are not only different, but have multiple expressions! I guess lego knew it would be too boring to just have the very static Proto-Jack-Stone figures with the same expression all the time, but they really put effort in making them emote.
The bird in this set also apears in another set, 4174 Max Goes Flying. That set also inexplicably uses Exploriens slopes.
Also... That 3rd figure beside Max and Tina. Jake. Is his torso based on Johnny Thunder's? It has the pockets, red bandana, brown rope. And the pockets on his legs are like those JT has in Lego Universe. Hmmmm...
Creator-Jack Stone , early 2000 certainly was a weird time.
That video is truly a gem!
Wow, that was a shocking video!
My kids would have been bored out of their brains!
Compare this to The LEGO Movie, which was released just 13yrs later ….. it makes this rubbish look at least 40 years old!!
Tina even had a male voice! How hard could it have been to have a female voiceover?
Find a "4 Juniors" minifig that doesn't have a creepy face challenge
@lemish34 said:
"Wow, that was a shocking video!
My kids would have been bored out of their brains!
Compare this to The LEGO Movie, which was released just 13yrs later ….. it makes this rubbish look at least 40 years old!!
Tina even had a male voice! How hard could it have been to have a female voiceover?"
Are you seriously comparing something that's obviously intended to evoke a home video, to a feature film?
yeah i wish that Tina voice was at least a different actor. But I do have to say it's pretty well animated for what it is. And this looks like a really good selection of parts for a $30 set at the time, compare it to a modern set like 10404 and even thought this has less parts it has a lot more useful bricks than that one.
@Binnekamp said:
"It's odd how in the accompanying video the figures are not only different, but have multiple expressions! I guess lego knew it would be too boring to just have the very static Proto-Jack-Stone figures with the same expression all the time, but they really put effort in making them emote.
The bird in this set also apears in another set, 4174 Max Goes Flying. That set also inexplicably uses Exploriens slopes.
Also... That 3rd figure beside Max and Tina. Jake. Is his torso based on Johnny Thunder's? It has the pockets, red bandana, brown rope. And the pockets on his legs are like those JT has in Lego Universe. Hmmmm..."
Must be Johnny Thunder's weird younger cousin who is very annoying to EVERYONE and everything. (Makes Pippen Reed want to scream, Dr. Kilroy go "out shopping" and never come back, and even Sam Sinister can't stand him.) So, Johnny sent him to Three Mile Island and told him to wait there until they came back. Fifty-some-odd years later, he caused a ruckus at the power plant they eventually built there. (maybe you've heard about it?) His highly mutated remains are now at the bottom of a pit some place near Roswell, NM along with the alien spaceship debris from Indiana jones 4.
Image is a bit blurry, but it's not too far off Classic sets coming out these days
@Murdoch17 said:
" @Binnekamp said:
"It's odd how in the accompanying video the figures are not only different, but have multiple expressions! I guess lego knew it would be too boring to just have the very static Proto-Jack-Stone figures with the same expression all the time, but they really put effort in making them emote.
The bird in this set also apears in another set, 4174 Max Goes Flying. That set also inexplicably uses Exploriens slopes.
Also... That 3rd figure beside Max and Tina. Jake. Is his torso based on Johnny Thunder's? It has the pockets, red bandana, brown rope. And the pockets on his legs are like those JT has in Lego Universe. Hmmmm..."
Must be Johnny Thunder's weird younger cousin who is very annoying to EVERYONE and everything. (Makes Pippen Reed want to scream, Dr. Kilroy go "out shopping" and never come back, and even Sam Sinister can't stand him.) So, Johnny sent him to Three Mile Island and told him to wait there until they came back. Fifty-some-odd years later, he caused a ruckus at the power plant they eventually built there. (maybe you've heard about it?) His highly mutated remains are now at the bottom of a pit some place near Roswell, NM along with the alien spaceship debris from Indiana jones 4."
Wow, that post was just a roller-coaster ride, wasn't it?
@Brickalili said:
"Nana Bird? Could they not say Mother Goose?"
I thought the game thing as in Nanna bird but no its the NaNa bird because it flies around saying (it doesnt really sqwark) na na na na na (you know that classic na na tune kids say when they are beating someone in a game or causing mischief).
But in fact the NaNa bird is apparently a nice bird but (I cant remember if it was a he or a she, the same voice for every single character including the voice over was really confusing and lazy), anyway the NaNa bird steals peoples Lego pieces to fix it's nest because it lives on top of a mountain and has no engineering abilities (so its nest is at constant risk of falling over and needs supports). It gets very lonely up top of the mountain as no one visits it so it steals Max or Jack or Tom, Dick, Harry, whatever his name is.
@Binnekamp:
The studio that produced Mask of Light addressed this when adapting the Bionicle sets to film characters. If they just animated the sets, the poses would be highly restrictive, but you also wouldn’t be able to tell who was talking because they all wore full masks over their faces. So they had to add fingers, extra joints like knees and elbows, and they had to figure out a way to make mouths visible in spite of masks.
There are ways to cheat around this. You can limit your shots to the character who’s speaking, you can add a dynamic light to a robot’s face where the light would be, or add anime-style graphics to draw attention to the speaking character. I’ve seen brickfilms where the speaking character is given some distinctive movement. Or, yeah, you can animate the mouths.
@Zordboy said:
" @Murdoch17 said:
" @Binnekamp said:
"It's odd how in the accompanying video the figures are not only different, but have multiple expressions! I guess lego knew it would be too boring to just have the very static Proto-Jack-Stone figures with the same expression all the time, but they really put effort in making them emote.
The bird in this set also apears in another set, 4174 Max Goes Flying. That set also inexplicably uses Exploriens slopes.
Also... That 3rd figure beside Max and Tina. Jake. Is his torso based on Johnny Thunder's? It has the pockets, red bandana, brown rope. And the pockets on his legs are like those JT has in Lego Universe. Hmmmm..."
Must be Johnny Thunder's weird younger cousin who is very annoying to EVERYONE and everything. (Makes Pippen Reed want to scream, Dr. Kilroy go "out shopping" and never come back, and even Sam Sinister can't stand him.) So, Johnny sent him to Three Mile Island and told him to wait there until they came back. Fifty-some-odd years later, he caused a ruckus at the power plant they eventually built there. (maybe you've heard about it?) His highly mutated remains are now at the bottom of a pit some place near Roswell, NM along with the alien spaceship debris from Indiana jones 4."
Wow, that post was just a roller-coaster ride, wasn't it?"
"Remember, please keep your arms, legs, head, beaks, antennae, tentacles, and / or other appendages inside the coaster car at all times. We also thank you for not eating, drinking, snorting, or smoking anything while on the ride.... you've been warned!"