Random set of the day: Robo Pod
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 4346 Robo Pod, released during 2004. It's one of 48 Creator sets produced that year. It contains 50 pieces, and its retail price was US$3.5/£3.99.
It's owned by 2,236 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you should find it for sale at BrickLink, where new ones sell for around $13.90, or eBay.
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But really, just a great parts pack for green pieces when green pieces were still hard to find.
That is the smallest robo torso I have ever seen (the bottom build, not the top one).
Not sure why anybody would want to build what they tell you to. those green pieces would be better off for grass
I still remember building a tiny mech for 8589's Kraata with this.
@Zordboy said:
"But really, just a great parts pack for green pieces when green pieces were still hard to find."
Lloyd: And, uh, and- and what about me? What uh- what am I?
Wu: Lloyd, yours is the most important Element of all.
Lloyd: Okay! Hit me with it.
Wu: Your elemental power is... Green.
Lloyd: What's that?
Wu: Green.
Lloyd: Okay. So, uh, just to recap. Fire, Ice, Water, Earth, Lightning... and?
Wu: Green.
Hey, I have this one!
...Probably the weakest of the four initial pods (those colors really don't do it, pretty lazily-designed builds too). Coming from someone with my username, that's saying a lot. There were much better Creator robots on offer around the same time IIRC.
I have the game pack 65535 that contains all four of the initial X-Pods plus the recolor of this one (4335).
EYYY that's my guy!!! Classic lil robot man! Had 'im as one of my earliest since I was a kid, love 'im!!
The funnest builds were always the ones that included the pod itself. I liked turning it into a giant central wheel, letting it constantly carry its spare parts around with it
Luv me x-pods
Luv me robots
Simple as
This boy was on so many adventures with me. I added few pieces to make it more fun set.
I need to rebuild it with Mixel joints.
@lordofdragonss: Ooh, X-Pods with Mixel joints... You've got me drooling here.
Great set. You could build a good deal of robot creations with just the parts from this set. The main model (shown here as the X-shaped one) is absolutely great! It might not be as posable as a larger one or a build with Mixel joints, but it sure was compact. Almost minifig scale (albeit large for a minifig). The inclusion of a 'hand' and a 'cannon' made it playable as well, and it can even turn its head!
It was a great purchase for pocket money and I still love it a lot!
Fun fact, this is the only X-Pod to have a pallette swap. Yes, long before pallette swap sets became a thing! That's set 4335.
There's also a polybag version of this set 4346-2 and a Neuremberg Toy Fair version 4346-3 listed on Bricklink.
They're just not even going to bother trying to make a little dude to pilot from the pod in that middle one? Seems like a missed opportunity, but I guess that would have been up to us, which is fair, it is Creator after all.
Oh yeah, this is the stuff.
Never had any of the X-Pods myself - in the 2000s my Lego interests could be summarised as "sets containing minifigures and named characters", so bundles of bricks that built little robots or vehicles or whatever really didn't fit that category - but, that said, I do still have a memory attached to this one even so.
In my second year of secondary school, we had some assignment where, for reasons that I no longer remember, we had to bring in a paper advertisement to analyse for an English class. At the time, I'd recently got a Toy Story comic magazine, the very back page of which was an advert that I'd only passingly paid attention to... for Lego X-Pods, and specifically for this particular pod. Seeing the opportunity to tie the assignment in with something I was interested in - even if the X-Pods specifically didn't excite me they were still Lego - I carefully tore off the back cover of the magazine and brought that in as my advertisement for the task.
@NotProfessorWhymzi said:
"i'm just gonna leave this here. you can thank me later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIqrLFeIp4A"
Nice! I love how it uses some recognizable AFOL designs such as the blip and what looks like a robot turtle from Peter Reid.
These came out right before my “dark age” and was one of the last sets I bought.
@phi13:
I have every X-Pod (excluding packaging variants), and the long strap. I don't think I ever bothered to buy the short strap, though.
@lordofdragonss:
The articulation on these really were garbage. Mixel joints would be an improvement, but without knees and elbows, it will still be a bit clunky.
I wish they would bring these back, maybe expand them to include a uniqu minifigure and minifigure specific interactive parts so they could be any kind of piloted pod, furniture, shelter, environment, but most importantly BRING BACK THE POD.
I was always more of a fan of 4416, but a little pod full of robots *is* a little pod full of robots and you just can't beat that!!!
I really liked the concept of X-Pods. Unfortunately not all of the later waves were easily available. The purple monster pod was an interesting one...
@Atuin said:
"I really liked the concept of X-Pods. Unfortunately not all of the later waves were easily available. The purple monster pod was an interesting one..."
That was one of a few that I actually got a second copy of. I know the one with the TNG middle was another, but that might have been it.
@GSR_MataNui said:
"I was always more of a fan of 4416, but a little pod full of robots *is* a little pod full of robots and you just can't beat that!!!"
4416 is the best X-Pod. Reason? It was in LU as the Maelstrom-corrupted robots, as first seen in Avant Gardens and later as a rare in Crux Prime.