QMan Integrated Change ABC Set 41101

Qman's Integrated Change ABC is a 2-in-1 set built from 336 blocks, building two different fire rescue vehicles. Age 6+.

Why a fire service needs more than one kind of vehicle

Two vehicles in one box is a small set making an accurate point: no single fire appliance can do the job.

A pump carries water, hose, ladders and the crew. It is the first vehicle to any fire and it does most of the work, and almost everything it carries is about getting water onto something.

An aerial carries a ladder or a platform and very little else — the mechanism takes up the whole vehicle. It cannot fight a fire on its own, and it is useless at a road accident.

A rescue tender carries no water at all. It carries cutting gear, airbags, props and lighting, for the incidents where nothing is burning: crashes, collapses, people trapped in machinery. In most services that is now the majority of call-outs.

So a station sends a combination depending on what has been reported, and the combination is decided before anyone arrives — from a few sentences on a phone line. Getting that first guess right is one of the harder jobs in the service, and it is done by someone in a control room who will never see the incident.

A note on the name

Integrated Change ABC is Qman's own name for the set, and like several in this range it reads oddly in English. What the box contains is a two-in-one fire rescue build.

Specifications

Pieces: 336 · Two alternative builds · Series: Qman · Age: 6+