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Lego Maniacs' Guide: Reviews: Wild West : Bandit's Secret Hideout

[Purchase Lego at Amazon.com] 6761 - Bandit's Secret Hideout

Rating: 4 Stars
Pros: A great starter set for the Wild West theme, lots of booby traps/hiding places, neat concept of an abandoned mine
Cons: None noted
Contents: 238 pieces including 5 minifigs and 3 horses
Price: About $39.99 - Discontinued
Reviewed: 17-Jul-1996
Reviewed by: Joseph Gonzalez

6761 Old Crandall Mine sits just outside the limits of town near the fading and silent foundations of the previous settlement Peerless. Built a good decade before the gold rush was even heard of, the mine was begun by millionaire-eccentric Morris "Old Moe" Crandall and ended up closing six years later because nearly every shaft started would collapse, trapping too many unfortunate miners below. Three years after its closing, a twister passed through the area and wiped every building out but the foreman's shack over the main entrance. I reckon all that bad luck is where everybody got the idea the place is either haunted or cursed.
Some folks say you can see the ghosts of those lost miners pass through the invisible streets as wind rushes through the still-intact main shaft causing a ghostly whistle. Now, with the rush for gold on in every part of the country, some fools talk about opening the mine again, others talk about sending in government troops to unearth the lost bodies and put the souls of those men to rest, while still others are saying somebody ought to blow the entrance once and for all and cave the whole miserable operation in. Out of all that talk I do know one thing, the army would be out there lickety-split if they knew that Flatfoot Thomsen and his gang were holing up there with last week's robbery loot and a stolen war cannon.


The Bandits' Secret Hideout is yet another great addition to the Wild West theme. Just getting started on the mine makes me want to extend the mining shafts down and sideways with tunnels and hidden passages all over the place (of course several of my castle sets will have to suffer and become assimilated into this mountainous effort if it is ever to be).
For now I'm happy to just do some dreaming and plan out some of the stuff I'll work on in the future. I like the set because it gives a good combination of brown, black and grey bricks for some good building variations (though I would have liked a few more brown bricks if this were my first or only Wild West set).
The set is made up of the main mine structure, a secondary rock formation and a water barrel. The secondary rock formation is set to the right of the main entrance and there isn't much to it (though it does serve as a place to hide behind or climb atop). The water barrel (to the left of the mine) sits on a platform and has a little spigot that comes out at the bottom (like an old fashion water tower), it's just the right size to hide a sitting minifig and is built so it can tip over on somebody (don't ask me why I think it is cool, I just do). The centerpiece of the set is a three level design that looks like the mouth to a mine with the first two levels comprising the mining shaft. The first level has a main entrance and the second level has a small shack whose interior also opens into the shaft. The third level is more of a plateau type precipice which sits on top of the shaft with a rock wall to hide behind. (I think I would have liked this to drop into the shaft too, but that can be easily built into the set with the pieces they supply you with.) The second level shack has a one-piece set of steps which runs up to the door, this piece fits snugly to the shack entrance but can come loose and be knocked over as a means of deterring (and maybe even breaking any legs of) any would-be intruders. The shack floor is fairly small so that once inside, the minifigs can jump down to the first level and roam around the mine. The main level entrance has kind of a lame booby trap that consists of a mine car (with a cannon mounted on it) on rails. The exterior end of these rails rests on a 2x2 smooth-bottom round tile that is attached to a string. The string is stretched across the dirt trail that passes the entrance of the mine entrance and is secured at the opposite end of the trail. When nosey meddlers pass over the trail and trip the string, the smooth-bottom tile pulls out from under the rails (dropping the exterior end down) and the cannon rolls down the rails and out at the unaware trespasser. Boo! Did I scare you? I didn't think so, but the idea of the cannon on railcar wheels is neat. There is space on the back end for a minifig to stand on and ride out with the car. There's also a place on the roof of the shack where a bandit can roll a small barrel down on somebody entering the mine. (Are you getting the idea that this is not a good place for small children to play yet?)
Minifigs include three bandits: the green shirt top-hat gambler guy, all-in-black (but a brown cowboy hat, come on Lego, I want a black cowboy hat!) Flatfoot Thomsen, and badly-needs-dental-work red jersey hairy-chest dude. There are also two cavalry men plus three horses (brown, black and white), I do appreciate the variety of horses, Lego.
There is a saddle-brace carrier that goes over the back of one of the horses that holds a bank safe on one side and rifle box on the other side. Something like this really ought to be loaded on a mule but I reckon the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals wasn't around in the 1800's.
New unique parts include the 1x16 rails (that look an awful lot like the old 12-volt train tracks--all plastic with little teeth running along the top edge of the rail, but these are spaced two pegs apart), the cool railway wheels that the cannon rolls on, 1x2 and 1x4 molded "log" bricks, the big barrel, pistols and rifles (if you haven't picked up a Wild West set yet), and an extra cowboy hat and skeleton skull for the "keep out" sign that goes in front of the mine. I dig this extra skeleton head and I'm real tempted to put it on one of my bandits so he can be a real "ghost rider"!
Wrapping things up, I was very impressed with the hideout set. It's ten dollars less than the 6765 - Gold City Junction but is just as enjoyable and almost as much an integral part of any frontier settlement.

59 readers have rated this set as 4.475 out of 5 stars.
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