6716 - Weapons Wagon

Rating:
Pros: A must-have for your Wild West collection. I wouldn't mind a different version of the covered wagon next year.
Cons: Not really worth the money. I would rather they left out the cannon and I pay three dollars less.
Contents: 63 pieces including 1 mini-fig
Price: $7.99 - Discontinued
Reviewed: 06-Aug-1996
Reviewed by: Joseph Gonzalez

The West was rarely this wild. Meet Captain Jean (pronounced "John") Rambeau. Mean, muscle-bound (okay, you can't see them under his blue cavalry shirt), and speaks with a bronx accent. He's a weapons aficionado and carries his own armory wherever he goes, demolition expert (he strikes the match to light the TNT off of his teeth), and all around not-wise-to-get-into-an-argument-with kind of guy. When the army needs to rescue P.O.W.s (from the civil war?), or needs to shake a few trees south of the territories, Jean Rambeau is there to make it happen!

---

I was a little bit disappointed by the simplicity of this set, but it is obviously a small set and does contain the covered wagon cloth piece, so one shouldn't complain.
I never saw the wagon in any catalogs and didn't even think of its availability until I saw it on Mike Kennedy's Lego page. I contacted Mike and he said he got it through Shop at Home so I called the next day and ordered two of them!
It really isn't a bad set, I guess it just doesn't seem to be worth more than eight dollars.
It is simply a covered wagon, cavalry soldier, cannon, six-shooter, rifle, saber, and 1x2 TNT print flat. (Pretty obvious why they call it the weapons wagon, eh?)
One interesting feature is that the wagon base is a hollow 2x4 1-brick-high area where you can fit the pistol, saber and TNT (I kind of would have like to hide the rifle also, but no big deal). The wagon space (covered) is 2x8 and I suppose I would have also liked this to be a little bit wider, but if you take out the goofy cannon balls (shown as being stored in this area in the instructions), you can still stand four or five mini-figs in here for transport.
The only real unique piece here is the cloth section that is used to cover the wagon. It has the two crossing sabers within a circle printed on both wagon sides and I don't like that because I may want the wagon for settlers instead of cavalry; but some of my cloth sections (ship sails) go into the clothes washer and dryer a couple of times before use to give them that "worn" look anyway, perhaps a dab of bleach may spill on this area before it goes into the wash. (Hey, I have two sets, I can experiment a little.)
I was glad to add this set to my Wild West collection. (What's the old West without covered wagons?) I guess I just expected a little more and would rather have had a few more bricks instead of the cannon (which is included with almost every Wild West set this year anyway).