Great Scott! After the success of his DeLorean project for LEGO Cuusoo, Team BTTF lead Masashi Togami is back with more Back to the Future-themed models, hoping to gain 10,000 supporters and follow the DeLorean into production. And three more of them also feature that famous time-traveling, gull-winged car!
First up there’s the giant UCS (Ultimate Collectors Series) version with full remote controls.
At the other end of the scale is a tiny version included with a micro scale model of Hill Valley’s famous courthouse, complete with the clock tower – which can actually join together with Lego’s own ‘Mini Modular’ set. Just like the original DeLorean set can change into three versions (one from each movie), the courthouse can change from the regular version seen in the 50s and 80s, to the future version that Griff and his gang crash through in 2015.
The third extra DeLorean is somewhere in the middle, and at 6 studs wide, just a bit smaller than the production set. It’s been shrunk down slighty so that it can fit inside an excellent model of Doc Brown’s big white GMC truck from the Twin Pines/Lone Pine Mall – and the set even includes Doc and Marty in haz-mat suits. No crazy terrorists in a campervan though, shame.
Proving that BTTF isn’t all about stainless steel sports cars, Masashi also has some more of the vehicles from the trilogy hoping to capture your support. Doc Brown’s Time-Traveling Steam Train is nearly halfway to the 10,000 goal now, and has a flying mode as well as being able to use the standard LEGO Train system. But what I want to know is how the hell did Doc Drown manage to build it in 1885? I’ve always wondered about that.
Biff Tannen’s 50s Ford is there too – with all of his gang, but no manure! And finishing off the collection is Marty’s 1985 Toyota Hi-Lux truck complete with Jennifer (v2.0). They are all great sets and worthy additions to any fan’s collection.
I got my DeLorean as soon as it was released and, like many other Lego fans out there, was a little disappointed with some of the changes LEGO made to the original Cuusoo design. The biggest and most obvious of these is the hood: gone was the perfect, smooth slope, replaced with an ugly, stepped design. I can sort of see why the change was made; it allowed for the sides of the windscreen to be angled inwards and also made it much simpler to add the box of vintage electronics needed get the time machine back to the old west – but that doesn’t mean it was right!
A quick visit to bricklink.com fixed this – for about a buck you can buy the 6×8 light grey slope and improve the model dramatically. The one I got was a bit yellowed, but I can live with that. I still can’t work out how Masashi fixed the 50s electronics box onto his version, but I like it in ‘future’ mode best anyway and besides, all of those extra pieces seem to have been made into an awesome robot!
The other big change seems equally daft. The production model can only fit one minifig in at a time! Luckily, this is a simple one to fix too – all you need to do is rebuild the 2×4 grey section of the floor plan where they sit using 4 2×1 ‘jumper’ plates. This allows both minifigs to sit in there using just one leg each. You also have to raise the roof by 1 plate and adjust their arm/hair positions to make it work, but it’s pretty straightforward. The only other weird one is the front bumper – it’s only 7 studs wide whereas the rear one (and the rest of the car) is 8. Again, a relatively simple thing to fix – makes me wonder why I haven’t done it yet!
Hopefully, if any of the other models do make it past the review stage and into production, there won’t need to be as many fixes! Please go and show your support on Cuusoo now, and the original DeLorean set is still available on Amazon
