#4010 Police Rescue Boat
In October 1987 I bought the #4010 Police Rescue Boat at the Domus department store in Uppsala using money gifted to me by my grandparents.
LEGO had released a first wave of minifig scale floating boats in ’82 that I never saw. The second wave in ’87 introduced this police boat, and as I don’t really recognise the Swedish LEGO catalog of ’87, I must have first seen it at the shelf in the toys department.
This was my first and only LEGO boat with a floating hull and I was very happy about it! The price tag must have been somewhere above 100 kr, as I remember seven year old me paying for it with a 100 kr banknote and some change.
The hull came as a single massive part, the biggest LEGO part I own — with the six giant wheels of my M-Tron Mega Core Magnetizer coming second. After the hull is added in the first step there are just 82 parts left to complete the build…
In step 3 we place a special large black weight at the back of the ship for added stability when floating.
The top of the build is on hinges so it can be opened for access to the interior, although there’s not much to do down there, apart from sitting at the desk. I guess police officers always have a lot of paperwork to do, even at sea.
I’m impressed to see that young me had added the stickers rather neatly and symmetrical to both sides and the back of the hull.
It’s apparent that some of the white parts, especially the deck, have yellowed more than others, although it may be that some of the parts actually belong to other older sets of mine.
The two police officers carry some equipment in the form of the omnipresent walkie-talkie and a flashlight, but being the crew of a rescue boat of course they also have scuba gear stowed below deck.
At the bottom of the hull there’s a notch allowing attachment of a battery motor. Those motors followed some kind of standard for boat toys, were not produced by LEGO, and I actually had one in light blue from some other toy that I can’t recall.
But I do have clear memories of this police boat chugging around in circles in the small paddling pool in our garden in the summer of ’88. Perhaps that’s when sunlight started eating away at the white deck…
