Ordering a new USB-C cable, I pondered what I could add to my cart that would qualify me for free shipping.
Not exactly a question dating back to Thales, but there’s always some household item or bike accessory I’ve neglected. Then I remembered a recent discussion I had with my siblings about space Legos, so out of curiosity I typed “Blacktron” into the search bar and was stunned to see the Invader pop up!
Except it wasn’t the Invader. It was sleeker and, it looked, well, cooler. And it had a new name: Blacktron Cruiser.
Wow. Where did this come from?
(Although, further research showed that “Cruiser” was the set’s name in the U.K. and possibly elsewhere.)
For background, from childhood through roughly middle school, I poured my allowance and directed gifts into Legos, and I do not regret it one brick. Those years coincided with Lego thematizing its offerings. No longer would there be a generic moon base, a generic town, or a generic castle. Now, there would be factions, and one of the first space factions was Blacktron, a kind of space gang with black ships and black figures wearing cool black visors. More surprisingly, the sets featured modular components so if you owned more than one, you could link them together. Want to connect the Invader’s cargo pod to the Renegade’s cockpit? We have you covered. Want the Battrax to pilot the AT-AT-esque Alienator? It’ll topple, but whatever.
In the pre-Internet age, the Lego people seldom explained the factions. The Blacktron sets’ names and demeanor certainly indicated villainy, especially when contrasted with the contemporaneous Futron space faction. My recollection was that Lego skirted the violent tropes of their sets, given ’80s parental pushback. “Oh, that’s not a blaster, it’s a cutting torch.” Except I remember in one brochure a Blacktron holding a group of space figures at ray gun point. In no way was that a bullhorn, folks. Also, there’s no conceivable justification for all the castle swords and pirate cannons.
As ten-year-olds, my BFF and I produced an unusually sophisticated identity for the Blacktrons. Yes, they were primarily noble-savage-space-barbarians, but some Blacktrons were loyal to “the good guys,” much like foederati in the Western Roman army. Mainly it was a rationalization for siding our favorite Blacktron ships with the other good guys, but it worked.
Oh, and this same BFF insisted that Blacktrons would never remove their visors for outsiders, so he had The Mandalorian beat by thirty years. One more reason to skip that show.
When the Space Police faction came out a few years later, invariably the prisoners were Blacktrons, raising the question of why police and not military forces should be dealing with a malevolent space navy, or why the Space Police were disproportionately incarcerating Blacktrons. It can’t be that they were committing a disproportionate number of space crimes. Weren’t the M-Tron miners responsible for asteroid mineral theft? And why did those M-Trons have so many “crossbow” pieces on their ships? “Mining”? Right.
Speaking of M-Tron, that’s where we return to this post’s topic. Yes, the Blacktron Invader was my first hot rod—a gift from my parents—but when I saw the Particle Ionizer in the Lego Club brochure ca. 1990, I was smitten. My parents ordered it for me, and I patiently waited. It took a few weeks—no next day delivery back then, kids—and when it finally arrived, it did not disappoint. Such joy it brought me that when I became an adult, I deliberately separated it from the rest of the Lego sets and moved it with me wherever I went.
Somewhat unfortunately, my life path has kept me in meager housing, and my parents sold their home before I had the space to store all our Legos. With my blessing, my parents left them to the new owners’ sons—whom I hope are enjoying them as much as I did.
Which brings us up to date with this USB-C cable order.
I still have barely a bookshelf’s space for any indulgent Lego sets, but all the childhood emotions around mail-ordering Legos returned. In adulthood, I’m the one with the credit card, and if I want to spend it on ice cream and Legos, then that is my right.
Swipey-swipey and I waited, just like when I was ten.
It arrived, but I procrastinated on opening it, partly because work was busy and I wanted to dedicate a full afternoon or evening block to assembling it. It also occurred to me that until I buy a bigger home, this may be the last time I get to open a new Lego set. Even with extra space, it’s not a sustainable hobby. When I was a kid, I crammed Legos into clothes drawers, bookshelves, and more shelves in the basement. I also don’t have the time. I think the Blacktron Cruiser will have to suffice, and I think it will.
The first thing I noticed about the Blacktron Cruiser was that it had 356 pieces, which seemed very high. The Invader had not even half that many, and the larger Blacktron Renegade had 313. Upon opening the box, I saw that the components were all small flat pieces and very few full-sized bricks.
In the twenty-some years since I last assembled a new set, Lego has improved its instructions and box experience. Now, the pieces come in numbered bags, which is quite an Ikeaic innovation. In the past, you would open the box and sift through the pieces yourself, and if you spent twenty minutes angrily looking for a specialized piece, well, that was part of the fun.
The instructions are more like the Technic series in that they include the type and number of pieces added in each step, which also reduces headaches. This was particularly helpful because now there are many specialized pieces I’ve never seen before. Call me Brick Van Winkle, I guess.
However, the big downside to the Blacktron Cruiser is that Lego did not print the Blacktron logo and other symbols on the pieces, so I had to apply stickers. Now, I don’t have the most artistic hands, so I winced as I peeled some of them off the pieces to reapply them. Even a slightly offset or rotated sticker is an eyesore to me. Fortunately, I figured out a workaround for applying the Blacktron triangle logo to the cargo pod—using Legos!
The covers are seven pieces long and the stickers are three pieces long, so there isn’t a good way to center them, but I think having them slightly offset is fine so long as they’re even and symmetrical. I am quite happy with how they turned out.
I’m not so happy with the high piece count. I think the set could’ve used more bricks and fewer flats like its inspiration. More bricks made it easier to damage while playing, but it also made it easier to reassemble afterward. At one point, I could rebuild the Invader entirely from memory.
(Another fond childhood recollection is trashing your sets with your friends and then putting them back together before it was time to go.)
Nevertheless, the Blacktron Cruiser is solid and has a good heft to it. However, I’m not so thrilled that it uses the gray clip pieces as connectors for the modules. Those pieces are number one on the list of pieces most likely to break, but then again, I’m not exactly going to play with this like when I was eleven.
Probably.
It is pretty fun to whoosh around my place.
It also comes with a curiously large arsenal. It has a blaster rifle—more on those below—what looks like a heavy blaster pistol, an extra blaster pistol, up to four lightsabers (two if you want to go Darth Maul-style), and a metal detector, which I’ve never had and can also be weaponized. Did I mention the cockpit module has a targeting computer?
About the blaster rifle, growing up we had two, maybe three of these pieces, and the first thing the Invader’s pilot would do is steal one of them from the other sets. Looks like someone’s flooded Blacktron-land with illegal space weapons since I’ve been away.
Assembly took a few hours over an evening and a morning. I listened Big Star’s Third/Sister Lovers, Reigning Sound’s Break Up Break Down, and Beethoven’s Fifth.
…And here’s the glamour shot.
A week later I realized I was out of printer ink. Now, how to top off this order?~