For my daughter's 5th birthday this summer I bought her a (almost) complete Lift & Load Depot #942. We already had the Lift & Load Lumber Yard #944 and a few other small truck/worker sets so I thought this larger Depot would be a fun addition.
The Lift & Load Depot was the first of the Lift & Load sets and was made between 1977-1979. Unlike other family oriented Fisher Price sets this was the first set to come only with three adult construction worker men. The base is made entirely of plastic and there are quite a few accessory pieces and fun ways to play with the base and set.
The complete set comes with three vehicles, three people and four kinds of cargo (all plastic). The base came with a trolley car, hopper, chain, cage and lift-arm, but more on those later.
The three vehicles included (L to R) a fork lift w/yellow-spring action fork that goes up and down, dump truck with a tilting bucket and a front loader with a yellow bucket that moves up and down. All of the vehicles were lime green and yellow. There were no other color variations. However, similar vehicles came in orange colors for different Fisher Price sets.
The cargo included 4 brown shipping pallets, 2 black oil drums, 2 grey "wood" crates and 2 orange colored crates. All of these were made of plastic, no actual wood like the #944 Lift & Load Lumber Yard. The cargo are pretty cool and can be used in a variety of ways on the equipment included in the Lift & Load base.
The front and one side of the base have lithographs on them. This side includes a gas pump and has stickers with caution tape, warning signs (love the "No Smoking") and one way. Also note that the building is number "942", the same as the set number. Love the details! Another extra detail are the "bricks" molded into the white plastic side of the base.
From this view you can also see the top of the yellow trolley car and the black plastic "chain" hanging down. This plastic chain is often missing from the set.
A main feature of the Lift & Load is the dark orange bucket that moves up and down the light brown conveyor belt. It is operated by a yellow hand crank on the side and is connected to a yellow lift.
Can I just stop right now and say this is super challenging to describe!! I am out of my depth with this construction lingo, ha!
So back to the set. The orange "hopper" bucket holds whatever cargo the kids want to move, at the top the bucket pushes out the cargo and it falls through. It lands either on the base or if a vehicle is under it will fall on that instead. Note that the orange bucket is (easily) removable and a result is also often missing from the set.
The top of the base has a yellow "trolley car" that moves along tracks built into the base. It has an orange hand crank on the side that releases the black plastic chain down through the set. Attached to the chain by a plastic hook is a yellow cage. This cage is removable and is very similar to the orange cage from the Lift & Load Railroad #943.
The trolley car has a seat for a worker to ride in. The yellow cage can old cargo for loading, or even a little standing person if your kids are creative like mine. :) Note that the trolley car can also let down the cage on either end of the set by moving along the track.
This particular set encourages more than one child to play together as there are many parts and pieces going at once to move the cargo up, down, on and through.
And to make it even more fun we brought out our other Lift and Load Lumber Yard set and the two sets worked well together.
For more information on the Lift & Load Lumber Yard #944 go here.
Happy constructing!
Thanks for sharing, that looks nice!
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